Cant grow pears? Losing pear blooms to frost? If you have a recurrent issue every spring where you lose all your blossoms to frost maybe your growing the wrong pear
" Description - # Colette Everbearing Pear Tree
Outstanding quality that keeps going. Broad for its kind, this shapely tree repeat-blooms and bears until hard freeze. First crops are of Bartlett size with superior quality, yellow skin, and a light pink blush. Smooth and aromatic, grit-free white flesh is excellent for fresh eating but also retains its flavor when canned. Subsequent fruit is set when other pollinators have finished blooming – a unique trait of its somewhat self-fertile nature. Originates from Illinois, introduced in 1953. Cold-hardy. Harvest mid- to late-September through hard freeze. Partially self-pollinating. Best pollinators: Bartlett or Beurre Bosc. " - Colette Everbearing Pear Tree - Stark Bro’s
Mine has fire blight strikes every year. It’s right next to a Clapps and the Clapps hasn’t had a FB strike yet. I’m very close to grafting the Colette over to something else.
Seems that a decade ago it was a good pear. Maybe things have changed. I recently saw a good review on one of my FB groups that the poster says it is self fertile…as they do not have any other pear trees.
Is it possible that my Dwarf Everbearing Colette Pear’s flowers have no pollen? I went to hand pollinate, and I’m not seeing pollen.
With the Apricots, I can see pollen (and plenty of it), and, with the Blackberries, I can see the pollen, though it seems scant (compared to Apricot); with the Pear I see none.
Nevermind! I found completely viable flowers on the Pear tree this morning!
They had been blooming without viable pistils–all there was was a short black pistil, as if it had grown and dried out.
Someone at Stark Bros said I was lucky to even have flowers the first year after planting, and inferred that the tree bearing non-viable flowers was just a part of its growing process, and I shouldn’t expect fruit until year 4-5.
This confused me.
I’m still figuring out how the pollen is supposed to work, though, because it seems like the stamens are too young while the pistils are still viable, then, later, maybe too late (maybe when the pistils are not viable), the stamens dry out and release pollen.
Maybe, in nature, the pollinators are expected to visit older flowers and carry pollen to younger ones.
I learned that pollen has a “shelf life”, so I’m not sure if I’m supposed to collect from these older, dried, stamens, and apply to the young pistils, so I’ve just been finding some stamens that are in between dry and wet (when they’re young, they’re wet), cracking those open, and applying the pollen to the viable pistils.
I found completely viable flowers on the Pear tree this morning!