Does anyone know of a resource that has the cold storage time required for different pear varieties ripening. To clarify I’m not looking for chill hours for flowering. Oregon State has a couple of articles about it, but it only has the main commercial varieties listed, Bartlett, Comice, Bosc and Anjou. So I’m wondering if anyone has seen references for other varieties.
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Tried to find that a few years ago. I don’t think it exist, but sure would be great if someone found one. My best response is most varieties will need the fridge and a few will ripen without it. I’ve been searching out all the no fridge euro pears.
In our climate, Western Oregon, if we let Comice hang long enough, they ripen with no storage. I just pick these for personal use though. This coincides with the paper I mentioned which has storage times lessening with longer hang time. However, we are in a prime pear growing region, so we may be lucky with that here.
Somewhere on growing fruit @scottfsmith posted this table:
It adds his personal experience to the OSU articles that you referred to.
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Given that it has Fondante des Moulins-Lille in it the table must be mine, but I don’t remember making it. … That reminds me that recently I was grafting a mulberry and I didn’t remember when the best time to graft mulberries is, so I Googled it and my own old post here answered my own question!
Back on the subject of pear ripening, it does matter a lot when they are picked. If winter pears are picked far too early they will be best after 2-3 months. A few times I accidentally picked pears like this and just let them sit in the fridge and eventually they were decent (not great but decent).
After ripening pears for 15 or so years the main way I do it now is by color. This will not be as dependent on how ripe they are when picked. Even if you pick them all at once some will be more ripe than others and so some will need more or less fridge time. Not just 1-2 days, we are talking up to 1-2 weeks difference on a batch picked at the exact same time. The color guide will get you the perfect pear. Every variety is different, but they will all go slightly from greener to yellower when they are ready. It varies a lot between varieties, e.g. Fondante goes from bright green to mild green when ready - yellow on that one usually means the pear is mush. After a few years you get familiar with the slight color changes on each variety that you grow. I only grow half a dozen varieties now so I don’t get lost trying to ripen too many kinds.
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Fantastic! @ZombieFruit Thanks for making the chart @scottfsmith lines up well with the other storage times I’ve read. Do you happen to have any experience with Conference or Abate Fetel?
I’ve reduced mine as well, with a focus on varieties that ripen right off the tree. Originally I wanted them all till I realized I would need a fridge for each. When it comes to picking I think the Harrows have really done a good job in making the ripening process easier.
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Somewhere decades ago I read that ancestral Pyrus fruits did not ripen until after the first snowfall, and thus the modern practice of refrigeration for ripening. This might have been a bit of creative writing since I’ve never been able to verify it. Has anyone else come across this statement?
I’ve never read it, but there’s lots I haven’t read. But it’s my hunch that part of the variability of pear ripening comes from the issue of how much chill they get on the tree. Obvious to me that a pear grown in a climate that has a few frosts before the pear is fully ripe will behave differently if it’s allowed to ripen (or almost ripen) on the tree in a climate without the frosts.
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I don’t have a decent fridge and I have two large old pear trees that I have never seen ripen their fruits outside. So I suspect they require cold storage to ripen. I do have a cellar that stays around or under 50 degrees at that time of year. Getting down to 40 degrees in winter roughly. I will try it out this winter to ripening the pears in there, but I am curious to hear more on this topic and this is one of the best threads I have found so far on the topic.
So let’s continue this conversation.
" Apples keep about two and a half times a long at 40-degrees as they do at 60-degrees F. Pears keep twice as long at 28-degrees as at 34-degrees F"
“the average freezing point of a pear is 28.2F”
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