The Sweet Cherry, on the other hand, must be coddled in every turn of the season, in climatic requirements being particularly sensitive to heat and cold. This cherry stands with the peach in not being able to survive temperatures much below zero and in suffering greatly from spring frosts because of early blooming. It is even more susceptible to heat than the peach, and especially cannot endure long-continued heat, both fruit and foliage suffering. The Sweet Cherry is at its best in a warm, sunny, genial, equable climate. The Duke cherries, hybrids between the Sweet and the Sour species, in the matter of hardiness are midway between the hardy Sours and the tender Sweets though this is but a very general statement applying to the group as a whole and not to individual varieties. Some of these withstand cold and heat well while others are tender in either extreme.
Cherries are more at the mercy of moisture than of temperature conditions. Continued rain at blossoming time will almost surely prevent a proper setting of fruit; and the cherries crack, and brown-rot becomes exceedingly aggressive if there is wet weather in harvest time. Late summer rainfall to supply moisture to the trees is a matter of small concern to the cherry-grower, for growth begins early and the crop is off the trees before summer droughts usually begin. Where irrigation is practiced water for the cherry is safely supplied at most seasons of the year except when harvest is in swing at which time the cherries will swell and crack if there be too much water.
As with all fruits the direction, temperature and humidity of winds are factors which decree whether or not cherries can be grown profitably either in a locality or a region. A pocket in the hills filled with dead air or a wind-swept highland would be unsatisfactory extremes; for, in the first case, fungi, especially the dreaded brown-rot, would take too great toll, and, in the second, blossoms would be blasted or foliage frazzled and the fruit whipped. The harsh, drying winds of winter, too, would be disastrous to Sweet Cherry culture and if extreme, as on the Great Plains, wood and buds of Sour Cherries would suffer. Artificial wind-breaks have not been found profitable in the hilly and wooded East, entailing too many disadvantages, but if cherries be planted at all in the prairies of the Middle West, some protection from the winds must usually be provided.
The two species from which cultivated cherries come grow with proper vigor in quite different soils. The Sour Cherry and most of its hybrid offspring, the Dukes, may be made to grow in almost any arable soil, but the Sweet Cherry is fastidious—to be pleased only by particular soils.
Sour Cherry orchards in New York most excel on strong, even-tempered, loamy soils, naturally or artificially well drained yet retentive of moisture. There is possibly a shade of difference in favor of clay loams and some thriving plantations may be found on stiff clays having good depth and good drainage. Wet, sticky clays underlaid with a cold, clammy subsoil—a combination all too common in Central New York—furnish conditions which defy the best of care and culture.
Sweet Cherry orchards are found excelling on lighter, and less fertile soils than those we have described for the grosser feeding Sours. Growers of Sweet Cherries conceive a perfect soil for this fruit to be a naturally dry, warm, deep, free-working, gravelly or sandy loam. If the soil is not naturally dry, it must be made so by artificial drainage, for this fruit is most impatient of too much moisture or a root-run restricted by water. In Sweet Cherry soils, as will be surmised, it is difficult to supply humus yet this must be done either by cover crops or by manure to make the soil sufficiently retentive of moisture. Sweet Cherries can be grown on other soils than those under discussion but, for a large, firm, finely finished product for the markets, only the soils described are suitable.
The conditions of soil and climate, as we have briefly defined them, that favor cherry culture are to be found in several parts of New York. Briefly we may name and describe the cherry regions of the State as follows:
The undulating, maritime plains of Long Island, covered with a thick deposit of sand, are very well adapted to cherries where the soil is rich enough to come under the plow. The genial climate, with its rather heavy rainfall, is precisely that in which the cherry thrives, the region falling short in the poorness of the soil—a fault easily remedied, where there is good bottom, by manuring. Despite the fact that occasional trees and plantations show that this fruit thrives on Long Island the cherry is not much grown here, the industry needing some leader to show the way.
The valley of the Hudson from where the river leaves the mountains on the north to its entrance into the highlands of its lower stretch is admirably adapted to cherry-growing, both climate and soil meeting the requirements of this fruit. In parts of the valley the industry has been developed, Columbia County taking first place among the counties of the State, with its 78,526 trees in 1909. The product of this region goes chiefly to the great city market near at hand. Unfortunately the standard of cultivation is low in the Hudson Valley and the handling and marketing of the crop is also on a lower level than westward in the State. The cherry harvest is earlier here than elsewhere in New York, if we except the small crop of Long Island, an advantage, for prices usually fall rather than stiffen as the season advances.
The great basin in which lie the Central Lakes of New York is far famed for its Sour Cherry industry, the product going largely to canneries. Some Sweet Cherries are grown—more and more are being planted—about these lakes; but the rich, heavy soils which mostly prevail hereabouts are more fit for varieties of the Sour Cherry; though the equable climate makes almost certain the Sweet Cherry crop on soils suited to its culture. Here, as elsewhere in the State, the acreage at this writing is greatly on the increase though it is doubtful if the advance will much longer weather the present depression in prices. All through this region, as in that to the north, the Sweet Cherry grows wild, thriving like the Biblical bay—seemingly a sheer gift of the soil and, like other gifts, generally neglected.