Those look quite nice!
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ltilton,
Thank you the majority of these pears are in excellent condition. Wish they would have held off a few days but the sun was hot today and they fell right off in my hand when I tilted them up.
Just beautiful even to look at. What an accomplishment!
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Anne,
Thank you the total harvest came in at four 5 gallon buckets off the red blushing Bartlett. It can produce 4 or 5 bushels on a good year so like other crops this year it’s a little light. We have had very high temperatures which also made the fruit sugary sweet and delicious so it’s a trade off worth the reward. It’s a standard tree so there are always some that I leave. The deer, birds, possums, badgers, and raccoons need to eat to so I likely left them 5 gallons or more. I have 30 gallons of pears in front of me and 5 more trees need to ripen. Some of the next batch are younger trees so they won’t produce much. Half a dozen more additional pears will come into production next year. I’m not counting the pears with just a few pears on them this year as production trees. I had a few produce just a dozen or less pears. My new trees have around 50-100 pears on them that I still need to harvest. The Bartlett’s are always a pear I look forward to! Luck, location etc. always play a portion in farming only half of it’s skill.
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Clark! What are you going to do with them? that is a huge amount of pears to eat. They are beautiful too!!!
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mrsg47,
We are going to can them and then eat them over the next winter. To bad your not down the road you could stop and get some ! I’m not giving many away this year because there are not a lot of them. I sold some one year to the grocery store and at the time they wanted more but I haven’t been able to supply them with any. My dream is to sell pears in my retirement to supplement my income. It’s not just that either there are no pear orchards in Kansas so if I could have a pear orchard maybe it would encourage other people it could be done. When I talk to friends everyone are growing apples and grapes but no one is planting pears because the investment in time is far to great. They also believe pears cannot be grown successfully in Kansas because no one is growing them. That is not entirely true because as I looked around I saw hundreds of pears growing at old homesteads and even in individuals yards that were sometimes very old. A pear tree that was on my property was over 100 years old I removed later to expand the pond. For a person who’s supposed to make a business eventually of selling pears I have a lot of opportunity for improvement. In the meantime it looks like the hay did ok this year so I can at least say I have a successful farm that’s a business. In a few years as other pears come into production maybe I can make some money off the fruit. The guy who owns the grocery store chain wants all of them he can get that I grow because they did extremely well for him. My goal is once Corvallis has scion wood again I will continue trialing pear scions until I find something that works good here in the Kansas climate. It takes years of research to find something like that out in a place where not a single large commercial pear orchard exists. The one pear orchard I heard rumor of existing was recently sold and had a primary focus on apples.
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That’s an awesome harvest, Clark. I wouldn’t know what to do with so many pears. Your Kansas pear “experiment” looks like it’s quite a success. Maybe when your newer trees come into production, yours might be THE pear orchard in those parts.
The fruit looks very clean, do you spray, or do the bugs just not mess with pears as much as apples?
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I do spray when it’s necessary. Some pears I grow spray free or nearly spray free.
I finally picked my lone Gravenstein apple today. It does not look dead ripe yet, but I could not wait any longer. It came off when I tilted it 90 degrees. It is in the fridge cooling down. I’ll eat it tomorrow. Here are some glamor shots:
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That’s a great looking apple Matt! Hope it tastes good! They are supposed to be excellent!
We do hay, and that is a nice looking field. There is something calming for me when you look out upon a nice crop of bales all done and waiting to be picked up. You are right, it is very stressful until all is harvested. Good for him that it is done.
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The next harvest coming up is drippin’ honey. They are getting pretty close. I tried a few today that were a little further a long than others. It rained about 1/2 inch which is unexpected in Kansas this time of year which may lead to cracking. Here is what the Asian pears currently look like!
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Those look very nice…!!
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Improved Kieffer are nearing ripeness but still need some time on the tree. Hopefully the rain today will improve their size. They are large now as you can see but typically they are about 10-20% larger. These are a great canning pear with some cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. The pears stay firm through processing.
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Duchesse d’Angouleme looks like it will ripen before the snow flys this year. I apologize for all the pear pictures but they are primarily what I like to grow!
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Thanks Fruitnut that means a lot coming from someone who grows as much fruit as you do!
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I think all your pears are amazing. And you seem to just come up with more and more great looking fruit.
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Thanks Fruitnut. Next year I should have several more varieties coming into production. I’ve been experimenting with pears here on my place for over 20 years. The nice thing about pears is I’ll be picking fruit the rest of my life from what I planted 20 years ago. The next generation of people that live here will likely be eating these pears. Many of the pears I’m growing now cannot be grown commercially. When I retire I would like to grow pears commercially so I’m still determining what will work best.
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Holy Cow1 Do you ever have pears. I’ll have to photograph my one meager tree, so you can really know what you’ve got there! They are fantastic! Even my squirrels couldn’t eat all of those pears!
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Pears are so hard to tell apart! I assume you have yours well-labeled
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