It’s obvious from their website photos and limited product they are small and new.
The prices and photo show they must be selling 1 year whips, which is fine by me. I think there is something to be said about buying a young tree and letting it get acclimated in it’s final location. Often they catch up to a bigger bought tree in a few years.
It is perhaps the way they should be grown, sold, and bought IMO.
But it isn’t sexy… And the grower makes more money by waiting a year it two.
But everything goes up in price, especially shipping.
Perhaps when they reopen there will be more varieties available.
The Honeysweet pear is the only pear currently listed. I assume it’s grafted on OHxF 87 or something similar.
BTW I was looking at Honeysweet: found a few nurseries stating up (or down to?) to Zone 9 while a few had chill requirements well over 1000 hours.
We’ve been at it for over 60 years. Our plants are harvested naturally and nursery grown. We guarantee every item we sell is delivered healthy and ready to plant. We’ll never send you plants at an undesirable planting time. Our plants are shipped bare-root so our customers are paying for quality plants and trees…not a cheap heavy pot with soil.
Don’t hesitate to let us know if there is anything we can do to help. We’re glad you’re here.
Maybe someone with math skills better than mine can figure out how a retailer can buy them from someone else and mark prices up to $4.95 to make a profit if they grafted on such a rootstock.
I think the only way possible would be seedlings… using my hillbilly math.
They may not even be grafted… could be rooted cuttings… that hillbilly math works almost perfectly.
Either way $5 retail seems crazy.
With what is in my cart…they are asking for $12 shipping…which i have no idea how they are going to pull off either.
Alan, You are very entitled to your opinion. I would think the same applies to me. The post I made on the Ambrosia pear was “my” Opinion. The article I read in the Southern Fruit Fellowship paper stated that the writer of the article owned a large collection of various pear varieties and each year, would conduct a tasting tour. Each person was given a printout with the name of each pear variety listed on the paper. The participants were to sample the varied types and rate them on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being horrible and 10 being the best of the best. According to the article, Ambrosia always scored high with all who tasted it and was always the highest scored fruit in the collection. After I obtained my own tree and was able to finally taste the fruits of my labor, I was in agreement with the pear tasters “opinion.”
Ambrosia is another pear with mixed info online for chill requirement.
No sight of scions for sale.
It’s nice for people here to give their thoughts on flavor of their varieties as of course every advert for a sale will have good things to say about any fruit.
I’m not voicing my opinion about what the best pear is, I’m voicing the fact that different varieties of pears perform differently in different weather and also that no pear or other fruit or musician or actor can really be fairly categorized as the very best.
I’m not sure if the taste test was blind, obviously if the tasters knew they were tasting a fruit called “Ambrosia” their objectivity would be suspect but the south does not feature ideal pear growing conditions and there are many varieties that aren’t often grown there- what is more, taste tests have a lot of problems in terms of whether fruit is picked at the peak time and if it is still in peak shape at the time of tasting. Usually the quality of varieties is as much affected by these factors as how the fruit tastes in ideal condition. Region is also extremely important… try to grow a good tasting Baldwin apple south of Jersey.
But the fact that a dedicated pear grower whose been doing it for a long time feels this pear is the best he’s grown certainly is significant… for southern growers, at least. That is southern growers with very similar weather as this grower has and has dawn to dusk sun as most commercial growers do. Some pears need more sun exposure than others to get good sugar- at least up here in NY.
Me, I want a pear that is resistant to scab and psyla and ripens after the stone fruit season is over and keeps a few months. One that bears well almost every year and gets up good sugar. Also that can be harvested tree ripe and doesn’t require a lot of thought on trying to pick it at the perfect time. Oh, and starts being productive by its third or fourth year. By this criteria, Harrow Sweet has worked best for me, but I don’t grow fruit in your climate and pears are not my favorite fruit.
While I post a lot since I’ve found this forum, I know I don’t live in a place that it’s easy or even advisable to grow a lot of different kinds of fruit.
I’m trying to pick and chose things that might have a chance at producing for me, but I know and expect there to be trouble with everything I try and certainly totally failure with some if not many.
I think planting mulberry and persimmon will give me two trees that should do well in the coming years once they get to be fruiting size and the mulberry will be small enough (Gerardi) to net for the #1 anticipated peat, birds.
Pears… I think I will have success with the two multi-grafted trees I have for Asian pears, fire blight being the known biggest issue. I have fire blight in my neighborhood so resistant varieties are a must.
I will try a few non-pure Asian pears as has been suggested on this forum and from my searches.
I’m sure we all know having a forumite fall in love with a particular fruit in their yard does not mean we get the same result in our location. The tree might not grow well. It might not fruit. The fruit might not ripen to it’s full taste potential. It might be great one year and not worth it the next few…
I like folks talking about what they like and don’t like about their harvest. I may change a decision to try a variety from that discussion, knowing it might even not be applicable to my area. There are only a few forum members close to me, so I’ll take chances and see what works out.
As long as I have a few things that are working, I’ll be happy to learn with the rest.
For pears, I’d like one that is off the tree good and one that stores. Everything else is extra.
Ambrosia, the topic of this thread, is on my list of possibilities.
As far as i can tell from my order from gmadewell everything i ordered was a seedling unless they were rooted cuttings…no grafts that i can find and all trees half the size of a pencil in diameter. If there is some kind of grafting under a microscope or something possibly.
The other guy that posted the thread said that he was going to give an honest review but i never saw him complain about his not being grafted or anything so maybe it was just me.
Niles gives a very good audio review of this pear… saying that its huge, sweet, not gritty, bears young and bears every year. And its fireblight resistant.
audio review beside the picture.
I will probably get the $50 one in the spring…maybe it will go on sale.
At the end of the day it all comes down to climate, soil, technical issues of growing and ofcourse preference
Last year I tried Elliot (trademarked as Selena), a small to medium size pear, slightly orange-red on the sunny side. It had such an intense pear flavor I never noticed in any other pear. It was super delicious and that pear scent was overwhelmingly sharp and very sweet. I was looking forward for this year’s crop, but the birds were two steps ahead of me, I was going to net each fruit 2 weeks before harvesting, but they ate them all up before that.
