2016 European pear variety observations

I gave a detailed report on mine in a thread called Southern Pears. That said Southern Bartlett is extremely juicy and absolutely out of this world when perfectly ripened in the refrigerator. It’s extremely juicy and bland handled other ways it seems. It has a very short shelf life. Southern Bartlett is ripe and needs to be picked on about the third week of July in SE Georgia. Golden Boy ripens about two weeks later in early August. It’s a consistently bigger pear and looks pretty much like a Bartlett pear to me (which is too blight prone in SE Georgia). It has a more robust flavor in more stages of development and is generally sweeter than S Bartlett. But it’s not as good as a perfectly refrigerator ripe Southern Bartlett. It’s skin is just bit tough. (Southern Bartlett has great thin skin.) Still, I think Golden Boy is an all around better pear because its for flexible and has a longer shelf life (1 month) if refrigerated immediately after picking. Golden Boy is a soft pear but kind of meaty and soft grained in texture. LeConte is just a small version of Golden Boy. It’s a little firmer still but still a soft pear. Tennessee is a small round pear with a thick bitter skin. It has the sweetest and most intense flavor of the pears I have ripened so far. I can’t decide if it has the best or worse flavor of my pears. I think it would make interesting juice and hard cider. Hopefully I will be in a better position to evaluate more varieties next year. God bless.

Marcus

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