Bosh to me taste different than most pears and I would like to grow it but I have also stayed away from it because of the reported susceptibility to FB.
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Nothing compares to a good Bosc pear. I planted one in December, and I have a russet Comice on order from Raintree to pollinate it. I like the look of russet skin on fruits. Seckel is my third favorite pear, but I don’t know if it grows in PNW.
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We have opposite climates so no idea but seckel has been very good, I do not like its growth pattern as its leggy and has a decent amount of watersprouts, it gives me very small but very delicious pears. It is fireblight resistant but i have seen strikes on it but they did not go far.
@RichardRoundTree,
Your semi-arid, low humidity climate in Denver is probably helpful in keeping fire blight at a much lower level than ours in the very humid east.
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You would think that but i assume its pretty humid inside a flower no matter what, and my assumption is since our uv index is 40% higher and we have higher spring daytime temperatures than most areas as well that creates a pretty rough Fireblight area. FB made apple orchards basically all fail around here in the 20’s and even the western slope which has a much nicer climate for fruit than say the front range Denver boulder area. Its my understanding even the settlers knew that after 10-15 years of apple plantings 75%+ would die and ranchers had a hard time finding food source for large amounts of hogs which is why chickens and cattle did much better here.
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If you like the flavor of bosc consider docteur desportes and others that taste like bosc but with more disease tolerance What rare pears should i order from the usda in 2020? - #8 by clarkinks
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Richard- I grew up in Westminster, CO. Our housing development was built on top of a former orchard.
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Nice, i was right near by in Golden which now fully touches boulder. Lafayette and broomfield are just fully metro now its crazy. Was it sour cherries?
We were told it was apple orchard. I remember when Louisville was a run down old mining town- now it’s trendy. Boulder has become Aspen.
I mentioned sour cherries because in the sixties there was a huge snap frost and it killed most(90%+) of the sour cherries (which was what we mainly grew) and thats when/where denver suburbs, boulder, ft collins all had a huge group of homes built on these defunct orchards. The google earth history thing is real interesting and funny how much info we still have from back in the day for the west. Applewood (the five mile apple orchard) was owned by a guy who first started making potassium nitrate out of dynamite leavings and he did alot of work on trying to make FB resistant orchards although he eventually gave up in the 30s and sold Applewood for real estate. All the mountain towns are overrun with rich people who do not live there now.
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@Olpea back to your original question here in kansas if its resistant my experience is it does not demonstrate that at all on my farm. Its more sensitive than forelle. Some pears such as bartlett , bosc, anjou etc are very difficult to grow here. Ive lost several doyenne comice grafts aka royal riviera. Ive grown them a couple years losing over half the grafts each year trying to learn the tricks to growing them in this area. I cant imagine how hard it is to grow them once they flower. Im trying red fleshed, conference, concord and other similar relatives looking for the right combination and i feel im close to growing a comice like pear.
Maybe i will not be able to grow the original comice but i keep trying . Im using tricks like grafting to low vigor or high vigor branches etc. See if i can slow the growth enough or speed it up . I would not consider comice fast growing as it is at least on callery even with interstems.
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Clark,
I did not know that Docteur Desportes tastes like Bosc. I think @scottfsmith has tasted it. Maybe, Scott will chime in.
I’ll be very happy if DD tastes like Bosc.
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It doesn’t taste exactly like Bosc, but it is closer to Bosc than most other pears. The like-Bosc comment is from Hartmann.
Whatever it tastes like it is an excellent pear. Unfortunately it is in a super low light spot and I don’t get many fruits from it. I really need to make some more room for pears as I only have about 15’ of pears in good sun.
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@scottfsmith im thinking of grafting comice , bosc, bartlett on branches normally i would prune off headed towards the ground. By doing this they would not only fruit faster but they would be less likely to have fireblight strikes due to insects and birds who like tops of trees and branches that carry fireblight. My concern is air movement is less so moisture is higher here towards the bottom of tree. Thank you for the dd suggestion i love the idea of a bosc like flavor without bosc like problems!
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@clarkinks I thought RR was a sport of Doyenne Du Comice? Many people have them very seperate and you know all the FB issues i have had. This one has not had one strike. Would you like to try it?
Clark,
Have you grafted Comice? How does it work out?
I am going to graft it this year. I’ll see if I will regret it 
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@mamuang i did graft comice years ago it is very slow growing. I lost half the grafts to fireblight. 2 grafts remain.Concorde seems hardier. I think conference died and I will try again.
Thanks, Clark. I will proceed with care.
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I have several comice trees and so far have yet to see any problems. Other than taking forever to fruit. I’m in Va. so the environment should be similar. Comice is king and I have to have every version of it.
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I put two grafts on. Hopefully, they will take.
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