This is what is said but there is more to this " Biannual Blooming
Pear trees may fail to flower after producing a heavy crop the previous year. This is because the buds for the following year’s flowers form while the current year’s crop is ripening. Supporting a heavy crop can prevent the tree from forming new flower buds. This leads to a cycle of blooms every other year. In young trees, it only takes a few fruits to prevent flower bud formation. Some pear varieties continue to have this problem throughout their life, while others begin producing flowers annually as they mature." Do Pear Trees Only Bloom Every Other Year? | Home Guides | SF Gate
That might support the hypothesis that the pear seeds are also producing a chemical which in high enough concentrations stops the flowering for a year. Some pears might produce more or less. Not sure about other stresses beyond that. Sometimes stressed trees will bloom in order to make offspring before dying…so an overload of fruit that somehow stresses the tree could have the opposite effect if there wasn’t some chemical involvement.
Scott,
I was happy reading about Gorham pear on Fedco Seeds’ website until I read your statement that your Grand Champion has not fruited after 15 years. Yikes!!
The good thing is that if Fedco can grow it, I can grow it. I probably won’t have your patience, though.
No it tastes really good but not just like comice. Different years taste different but it’s always good! So do I think Warren and Magness can be as good as comice? The answer is yes i do think they can be as good.
If it was me I would wire wrap a horizontal limb tight so I could taste some fruit next year. I have pears that take nearly that long it’s excruciating year after year waiting! The first 8 years don’t bother me as much but then I have expectations. Clara frijs has been a very light bearer so far but what it did produce was completely worth the wait.
Potomac needs to bump many of these on the list it’s a very high quality pear. Much better than I would have guessed. I’m not saying it will be that good every year but this year it was. I’m going to put this one on my priority list to graft at least 2 or 3 more of these. Harrow sweet I’m finding 2 trees are not enough. I’m OK with 1 Magness and 1 Warren. Korean giant seem highly prone to rot here so I may have made a mistake by having 5 trees. Several drippin honey is more than enough. 2 seckles are plenty. There are several of my small yellow pear. Accidently I have several ayers ( yes more than 3). Clara frijs i have 2 . Harrow delight half dozen, kosui 3 . There are many others I grow to numerous to name such as comice, beurre superfin, abate feel, Citron de carmes, Dana Hovey, forelle, Fleishman beauty and many many others
What rootstock your HS is on. Mine is on OHxF 97. It fruited in year 3 and every year since. I grafted it on another tree. The graft flowered and fruited the next year. HS is very precocious comparing to other Euro pears.
All my Euro are susceptible to pear blister mites if I don’t time lime-sulfur spray well.
My “Harrow Sweet” is on Pyro2-33. The leaves have these black splotches on them. Some kind of fungus. The Asian pear has none of this and the Magness has just a little bit. This Harrow Sweet is smaller than the Aurora that was planted a year later, and it is much smaller than the Magness that was planted at the same time as the Aurora. The Harrow Sweet is in full sun.
My guess is the Harrow Sweet is probably a mislabel but I suppose it could be a rootstock issue.
I don’t know Pyro rootstock. Maybe, if you take scionwood from it and graft it on a more vigorous tree, you could get your HS to produce faster that way.
Yes Pyro rootstock is significantly dwarfing. Harrow sweet would not do well on any dwarfing rootstock. It needs the opposite of that for rootstock something like bet, callery , or ohxf87 or 97. The Harrow sweet bears pears very fast but at the cost of runting the tree when allowed to. A tree that’s a dwarf like Pyro being runted by the scion wood of Harrow sweet won’t end well.
You add trees and I add limbs. We all have to work with our conditions. I have been reading all the posts about Potomac and I think it will be one that we will really like. Currently I have one nice limb but I plan to add a few more for 2022. Thanks for all your pear reports.
I see. Might be time to dig it out and replace it with one on OHxF87. There’s a chart out there, I think on Adams’ website, that shows Pyro2-33 only being slightly smaller than OHxF87. Adams sells to commercial producers. What value would this be to commercial growers? With apples, the plus with these super dwarfing rootstocks is fast production. What’s the plus side here?