Following up on this thread, I managed to harvest a few Dana Hovey this year. They are a late pear, picked later than all my other pears, and I stored them til now. They are excellent!! I can see why Mark was so excited, I completely agree with his impression of the flavor. It is the richest, most interesting pear flavor I have ever had. The only downside is they have a little more grit than some pears, but I’ll take that any day for the great flavor! They are small but bigger than Seckel.
Now all I have to do is figure out where to put more of it, I only have one limb on another tree now. Having a 50’ tree of this pear would be pear-adise
Sad to say that I only got a couple this year. I lost some to poor pollination, some to squirrels, some to insect pressure. But I’m glad to hear you scored!
Mine came from Fedco too.
It was my final graft of the season.
Since I grafted it onto a bearing size tree, I hope to get a taste in two to three years.
Hey has anyone put Dana Hovey on Quince? I was being absent-minded and grafted it on quince this spring without checking. According to this old Cornell report
Dana Hovey is OK on quince as long as you stake it as it is prone to break at the union. So, I think I will keep it and stake it.
I grafted Dana hovey on improved kieffer and it’s done fine after several years. Maybe I didn’t need an interstem between it an callery but I wasn’t taking any chances. Improved kieffer is typically a very good interstem.
This is from SE Pears by grower A.S. Chatham,
Diseases: In a very rare case of my experience [Dana Hovey] showing LESS fireblight than Hedrick suggests, my ‘Dana Hovey’ trees were remarkably free of blight. In more than 15 years and multiple trees and rootstocks, I only saw small blight strikes, which were easily controlled by pruning alone. Resistant to pear leafspot and pear blister mite.
Fedco said this " Pyrus communis Winter. Thought to be a seedling of Seckel. Roxbury, Mass., about 1854. Introduced by 19th-century fruit enthusiast Francis Dana who dubbed it “Dana’s Hovey” in honor of CM Hovey, Boston nurseryman and author of The Fruits of America. Sometimes called Winter Seckel because of its similarity to Seckel.
Small squat rich golden-yellow russeted fruit. Intensely sweet highly aromatic tender storage pear has excellent flavor; possibly the best eating of all winter pears. Keeps extremely well. Harvest in October and store in a cool dry spot. Still great eating in December—sometimes even as late as February.
Hardy vigorous moderately productive spreading tree adapts to a variety of soils. No scab and relatively few bugs. Z4. Maine Grown. (2½-6’ bare-root trees)"
Had a problem with fireblight on my test crops. Anyone else have problems?
It’s been fine for me for blight. This year Seckel is the worst by far, it got lots of strikes. All the other Euros including Dana Hovey have little or nothing.
Note that I added a whole tree of Dana Hovey on standard rootstock after my last post above. It will obviously take a long time to fruit but I can wait.
My 2nd year Dana Hovey doesn’t appear to be waking up this spring. Not sure what the deal is, we didn’t have that cold of a winter. I don’t think we hit -20 to -25 more than a handful of times.
