My less than 2 year old grand daughter chooses pears over apples.
She will eat apples… but ask for yelow pears first.
Our local walmart has yellow bartlet pears that when nice and ripe are delicious, soft and juicy.
I have 3 apples and 3 pears…
My pears are keifer, improved kiefer, orient… with grafts of potomac, bell, warren, karls favorite added. Hopefully she will like some of those.
TNHunter
My Ya Li and Tsi Li Asian pears kept great through April, but here it is June, and I still have some Arkansas Black apples in the fridge that are good (would have eaten then long ago , but they were hidden in the back.
I pulled up most of my pears. Fireblight magnet
Are the apples from the grocery stores really months old? Because why do they only last about a month at most in the fridge…
Fruit stored in “controlled atmosphere” -i.e., nitrogen gas- ages much more slowly than that kept in normal conditions. Major growers have special coolers where they monitor and control the atmosphere. They are pretty much beyond our reach!
Though a chest freezer that isn’t regularly opened does pretty well, you can also use a relatively tiny amount of dry ice to displace the oxygen (because it’s denser) and that would last for quite a while
It’s worth noting this is highly variety dependent. If you buy Goldrush apples fresh off the tree you won’t have any issues keeping them for months even if it’s in less than ideal conditions (in a fridge with auto defrost that you open all the time)
Moonglo and kiefer horrible. Shenseiki had it but not as bad. Pulled them all up.
Our Moonglow sucks. The worst fruit tree in the yard. Sparse curled foliage and few signs of growth here.
@dannytoro1 @whitecliffs I have an approximately 18 year old Moonglow pear here in very southern Indiana near Louisville and it gets a few small strikes of Fireblight many years. I never cut them out, and the tree heals itself fine, has nice leaves and produces pears.
I never fertilize or water it, even in drought, and let grass/weeds grow right up to the trunk and it seems to be okay with benign neglect. I think the difference in climate with your more humid and hotter climate is probably the factor that makes our pears act so differently.
Pears seem to like this area pretty well, but it probably depends on the variety. I grafted this spring some Kieffer, Korean Giant, and Honeysweet to wild callery pears that popped up in my fields. They are growing and seem to have taken. Hopefully fireblight will not be a problem with them either.
Having said all that, I would give anything to taste a fully ripe fig from a tree planted in the ground here and you guys can grow tree after tree of them and just gorge yourselves if you wanted to. I really miss figs!
Sandra
Grafted mine over to different varieties. The trees really didn’t have problems, but I thought the fruit sucked. Hard to ripen and not really that tasty.
Chicago Hardy fig should be able to produce in southern Indiana.
Even our callery pears can get fireblight bad, here. Hot humid weather is not kind to fruit. While it does appear we are going to have a decent fig crop, we have not had one for the past five years as the figs have been freezing back to the ground every year except this past year - so the figs are now into their second year of growth. We dont get cold for long, but it seems like we get colder for short periods.
@whitecliffs I really hate that about your figs. I just thought figs would be a breeze in your zone, but I am learning that growing fruit has its challenges in every area. Hope you get a bumper crop this year!
Sandra
