ALL ABOUT NORTHWEST CHERRIES
NW CHERRIES ARE GROWN ACROSS 5 STATES
A SWEET, HEALTHY TREAT
COMMON CHERRY VARIETIES
Our dark sweet and yellow cherries are recognized throughout the world for their sweetness. firmness and consistency in color. Here are some of the leading varieties we grow to provide cherries for your table from June clear through the summer
WANT TO FREEZE YOUR CHERRIES??
Here is a short video showing how to easily freeze cherries, this video shows freezing with the pits still in, but you can also pit the cherries and remove the stems and follow the same technique!!
CHERRY FACTS AND TRIVIA
It is thought that sweet cherries originated in the region between the Black and the Caspian Seas.
__________________________________________________________
Cherry domestication dates to before recorded history.
__________________________________________________________
Cherries derive their name from the Turkish town of Cerasus.
__________________________________________________________
Turkey remains the largest cherry producing region in the world.
__________________________________________________________
Cherries migrated with the colonists from Europe in the 1600’s.
__________________________________________________________
In 1847, a man named Henderson Lewelling traveled from Iowa to western Oregon by ox cart. He brought with him nursery stock which became the first cherry trees planted in the Northwest.
__________________________________________________________
Seth Lewelling, Henderson’s younger brother, was responsible for the creation of the most famous sweet cherry variety grown today, the Bing, as well as the lesser known Black Republican and Lincoln variet ies. As a strong supporter of President Lincoln, Seth named his ch erries accordingly.
__________________________________________________________
The Bing cherry is named after Seth Lewelling’s Manchurian orchard foreman and friend, Bing. Bing was over 7 feet tall.
__________________________________________________________
The Rainier cherry, named after Washington State’s famous volcanic peak, was created in 1952 by cross-breeding the Bing and Van varieties. The cherry was developed by Dr. Harold W. Fogle of Washington State University in Prosser, Washingt on.
__________________________________________________________
Washington Stat e grows more sweet cherries than any other region in the nation.
__________________________________________________________
Cherries have the shortest period between flower blossom and harvest of any tree fruit (60-75 days).
The maraschino cherry was created from sweet cherries.
This famous dessert cherry originated on the Balkan Peninsula and northern Italy where merchants would add liqueur to a local cherry called the Marasca. The cherry product that resulted was imported into the United States in the 1890’s.
__________________________________________________________
In 1896, U.S. ch erry processors began experimenting with a domestic sweet cherry. Less liqueur was used in the processing and almond oil was added. Eventually, the liqueur was eliminated altogether. By 1920, the American maraschino cherry was so popular that it had replaced the foreign variety in the United States.
__________________________________________________________
Broadway in New York shifts west at East 10th Street because a cherry tree once stood there.
__________________________________________________________
There are more than 1,000 varieties of cherries in the Unit ed States, but fewer than 10 are produced commercially.
__________________________________________________________
At one t ime it was against the law to serve ice cream on cherry pie in Kansas.
__________________________________________________________
The earliest known ment ion of cherries is in Theophrastus (372- 272 B.C) “History of Plants” in which he indicated that cherries had been cultivated for hundreds of years in Greece.
__________________________________________________________
The Philosopher Pliny suggested that the Roman general Lucullus introduced cherries to Europe around 74 BC, but some research suggests th at cherries were known in Italy at a much earlier date.
__________________________________________________________
It is said that Lucullus committed suicide when he realized he was running out of cherries.
__________________________________________________________
Cherries are related to plums and more distantly to peaches and nectarines.
__________________________________________________________
Cherry pits have been found in several Stone Age caves in Europe.
