When to Pick Cherries: Ripeness, Rain Splitting and Beating the Birds

Cherries do not ripen after picking

There is no ripening in the bowl. A cherry picked early stays as sour and firm as the day it came off, unlike a pear or a peach. That makes the picking date the single decision that determines how the fruit tastes, and it is why cherries picked from your own tree are so much better than most bought ones: commercial fruit has to be picked firm enough to travel.

Sugars rise fastest in the last few days on the tree, and color lags behind flavor. Fruit that already looks ready will often gain noticeably in sweetness with another two or three days hanging, so long as it does not rain and the birds have not found it. The whole art of picking cherries is stretching those last days without losing the crop.

Ripening is not uniform. A single tree takes 10 to 14 days to bring everything in, with the sunny outer top ripening first and the shaded inner and lower fruit last. Plan on picking over the tree three or four times rather than once.

Taste one fruit from the shaded lower inside of the tree, not the best-looking one at the top. If the shaded fruit is good, the whole tree is ready. Judging by the sunniest fruit means picking the rest a week early.

Rain near ripeness splits the fruit

In the last week before picking, a cherry's skin stops expanding while the flesh keeps taking up water. Rain sitting on the fruit is absorbed directly through the skin, the flesh swells faster than the skin can stretch, and the fruit cracks. Splits appear within hours of a heavy shower, and once split the fruit rots within a day or two, usually taking neighboring fruit in the cluster with it via brown rot.

Nothing you do after the split helps, so the response has to be anticipatory. Keep soil moisture as even as possible through the final three weeks, because a tree that has been dry and then gets rain takes up water hardest and splits worst. A mulched, evenly watered tree splits noticeably less than one left to swing between dry and soaked.

The other tool is a cover. On a dwarf tree a sheet of clear polythene rigged over the net frame during a wet forecast keeps rain off the fruit while leaving the sides open for air, and this alone can save a crop. Leave the sides open: a fully enclosed tree in warm, wet weather gets brown rot instead.

If rain is coming and the fruit is close, pick early. Slightly underripe cherries in the kitchen beat a split crop on the tree, and they cook perfectly well.

Birds take the whole crop in a day

This is not an exaggeration and it is not a gradual loss. Blackbirds, starlings and thrushes track the fruit as it colors, and a flock that finds a ripening tree will strip it between dawn and mid morning. Gardeners routinely lose an entire year's cherries in one visit, having watched the fruit for six weeks.

Netting is the only thing that reliably works. Deterrents, tape, models of predators and hanging discs buy a few days at most because birds habituate quickly. Get the net on when the fruit first shows color, several days before you expect it to be edible, because birds start on fruit before you would call it ripe.

Netting has to be over a frame rather than draped on the tree. Birds land on a draped net and reach fruit through it, and the net snags on spurs when you pull it off, tearing off next year's fruiting wood. Use a mesh small enough that birds cannot get through, weight or peg the bottom edge to the ground all the way round, and check daily for gaps: a single bird inside a net does more damage than several outside it, and can become trapped.

1. Net at first color change As soon as fruit turns from green to straw or pink, cover the tree. Waiting for red means the birds have already sampled it and will keep returning.
2. Peg down the whole perimeter Birds walk in under a loose edge far more often than they fly through the top. Weight the hem with timber or pegs and walk the full circumference to check it.
3. Inspect the net each morning Look for holes, snagged corners and anything trapped inside. Free trapped birds immediately and repair the hole; if you do not, others follow the same route.
4. Keep the net on between picks Since the tree takes two weeks to ripen, refasten the net after every picking session. An uncovered tree overnight in the middle of harvest is the same as an uncovered tree all season.

How to pick, and how to keep them

Pick with the stems attached. Cherries pulled off without stems lose juice at the tear, ferment and mold in a couple of days, whereas stemmed fruit keeps a week or more. Hold the stem, not the fruit, and lift with a slight twist upwards; if it does not come away easily, it is not ready.

Do not tug the spur off with the fruit. Those short knobbly spurs carry next year's flowers, and stripping them while picking costs you future crops. Where fruit clings hard, snip the stem with scissors rather than pulling.

Pick in the cool of early morning while the fruit is firm and its field heat is low. Warm cherries picked at midday soften and bruise in the bowl. Get them into a cold place quickly: at 32-35F (0-2C) and high humidity, unwashed and stemmed, cherries keep two to three weeks. Wash only just before eating, since surface water accelerates rot.

Anything split, bruised or overripe goes straight into a separate container for cooking or freezing the same day. One rotting fruit in a punnet spoils the rest fast.

Keep a record of the first and last picking dates, the weather during the final fortnight and roughly how much you took off each tree. After two or three seasons those notes show you the normal ripening window for your site, which is what tells you when to get the net on next year.