Sweetheart cherries, 3 days pre-harvest
The Jealous Fruits Flagship On August 1st, we started Sweetheart harvest in our earliest blocks in Kelowna. Sweetheart is the original cherry variety responsible for the blossoming of the Canadian cherry industry in the 1990s, and on through to today. Grown in the Canadian climate of the Okanagan valley, with mild sunny days and cool nights, Sweethearts develop a very high sugar level, along with a crunchy texture; that cherry connoisseurs love. Our oldest Sweetheart cherries were planted in April of 1985, at our home farm in Carr’s Landing, just north of Kelowna.
Sweetheart is not only famous in it's own right, it is also the parent of many of the late season varieties from the Canadian breeding program at Summerland. Staccato, Sentennial and Sovereign, are all open pollinated seedlings, with Sweetheart being the mother tree of all three. Sweetheart, and all it’s progeny, have the same firm crunchy texture, and distinctive acid/ sugar balance, that cherry lovers enjoy. It is these very characteristics that result in their amazing shipping ability and shelf life. Sweethearts and their offspring represent 2/3 of the production base at Jealous Fruits. The Canadian cherry industry as a whole is eternally grateful to the generations of Canadian cherry breeders who toiled for decades to develop these wonderful cherries: The late Dr Karl Lapins, Dr David Lane, and Dr Frank Kappel, to name but three.
