Abate Fetel and Concorde are two of the most elegant pears that exist. Fetel is my absolute favorite and I cannot wait for it to fruit. The taste is excellent as well. Just sweet enough. They just look beautiful on the tree. There is one other elongated Italian pear (cannot remember the name) that is right up there with Fetel. Fetel is the most beautiful pear. Agreed.
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Here in the Northeast, not so much. It is very susceptible to scab, pear psyla and fireblight. This year I didn’t get enough spray on it to keep it in adequate foliage to sweeten its fruit at all and it was the only one out of about 10 varieties here that sucked.
Yet at some sites the above pests haven’t shown themselves and it does quite well. Anywhere I manage old trees, though, the pests have found them.
I grafted my Abate Fetel on quince ba-29-c. It fruited a few years after I grafted it. You should have seen it it was a tiny tree but it made thick branches and bloomed and fruited. I only allowed it to keep two pears and both were excellent. The only pear I ever fruited better than that was Seckel which only fruited one year for me(lack of chill). Unfortunatley I had to move the next year after Abate Fetel fruited. I think about that tree all the time. Abate Fetel never blighted in the few years I had it. Even in years when other varieties got hit. MrsG I think there are a few Italian varieites with long necks but I can’t recall there names right now. For what its worth to anyone I think AF is pretty low chill.
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Thanks Wild, I am aware of the chill factor and the chances of the tree surviving might be fine but producing fruit is another. Raintree, from whom I purchased the tree states it is growing from zone 5 to zone 9. That is quite a stretch. I am on the same latitude as Goult France and they grow there. Fingers crossed.
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Best if luck Mrsg! The good news is you can grow many things that we in the south only wish we could.
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@fruitnut,
As I was eating some grocery store pears today I purchased on a song ( 5/$1) i was thinking about you and wondering how your Bosc crop is doing this year? Any chances of pictures while they are on the tree? I cannot grow pears as cheap as I bought these but I’m a little apprehensive to eat them all because there must be something wrong with them right? The first one I ate tasted perfect! I’d feel better if I grew these!
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My fire blight, psyla and fabracea leaf spot love them! Of all the pears I grow they love Bosc the most
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I have bought Bosc in the store and very much enjoyed them. We have a tree that was planted in 2013 that is doing well.
Bartlet is my Hubby’s favorite, and we have two big old trees, and three young trees of Bartlet. It’s about time to pick them here.
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Bosc is also the hands down favourite Euro pear in our extended family. I have one second leaf tree but no fruit this year. Had couple last year. It’s prone to pear rust here in Zone 8. Wishit was as easy to grow and productive as our Ambrosia apple trees, another family favourite.
Anthony
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I love a good properly ripe Bosc pear fruit, yet the fact that they can be such a disease and pest magnet keeps me from wanting to get the variety.
I was reading that Docteur Desportes, that Doyenne Gris, and that Elliot are like Bosc, fruit wise (taste, texture, juiciness, flavor strength, and sweetness) which is the closest variety to Bosc, is there any other variety that you know of that is close to Bosc?
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I’m a big fan of bosc ever since my friend from work gave us boxes of them and we dried them.
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It’s definitely one of the prettiest pears!
By the way, @Blake discovered one which seems to have some FB-resistance–at least in this region:
I grafted it this season, and look forward to seeing how it does.
Anyway, this might be of interest to those of you who’ve avoided growing Bosc because of its disease-susceptibility.
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