When you harvest the delicious cherries in abundance over the course of the summer, the work of the previous months has been worth it. The right time also matters when it comes to cherry harvesting.
When and how should you harvest cherries?
Cherries should be harvested when they are fully ripe, when they are soft, juicy, fully colored and aromatic. Harvesting ideally takes place over the course of 1-2 weeks in the early morning hours and in dry weather. Use a sturdy ladder or a fruit picker and harvest cherries with the stem on to protect the fruit wood.
Harvesting ripe cherries
The cherries are fully ripe already on the tree. You can recognize this because the fruits are soft, juicy, fully colored and aromatic. If you don't want to eat or process the cherries right away, you can also harvest fruits that are not fully ripe.
For immediate consumption, however, you should wait until they are fully ripe, as the cherries increase in both size and quality. For some types of use (e.g. rum pot) it makes sense to harvest overripe cherries, as they have the highest sugar content in this state.
Harvest time
The fruits of a tree ripen fairly evenly, but ripening usually takes place over 1-2 weeks, so it is possible to spread the harvest over a longer period of time. The fruits ripen earliest on the well-exposed outer parts of the crown. These also produce the largest and tastiest cherries. If possible, cherries should be picked early in the morning and in dry weather while the fruit is still cool.
Cherry Week
The cherry harvest season is divided into 12 cherry weeks. However, a cherry week does not consist of seven days, but fifteen days, so a month contains two cherry weeks. The cherry weeks in Germany begin on May 1st and end on October 31st. In the six months in between, it is possible to freshly harvest different early and late cherry varieties in different regions of Germany.
How to harvest
For immediate processing, the cherries can also be harvested without the stem, otherwise they are picked with the stem on to protect the fruit wood. If possible, sour cherries should be harvested using scissors to avoid tearing out the fruit stalks and thus becoming infected with Monilia tip drought. A good, sturdy ladder is essential when harvesting cherries from large trees.
Tips & Tricks
The best cherries often grow at unreachable heights. If climbing ladders is too dangerous for you, you can also harvest from the ground using a fruit picker, which is available commercially.