Douglas are great pears for Kansas! There are many bushels of them this year! A true branch breaker of a year! The pear skin is thinner than usual making this years crop hard to beat! We are very blessed! Hopefully everyone else has had good fortune with their pears like i did with these douglas pears! Douglas is a true gem from Douglas County Kansas! Similar quality to Duchess D’ Angoulme but most consider douglas superior in flavor.
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Sounds good. How precocious are Douglas Pears?
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They are very precocious.
I guess I’ll have to try it again
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Douglas is starting to taste pretty good! These are good fall pears for our area. These are a good balance of sweet and sour that reminds most people of an apple more so than a pear. Almost everyone eats a second one after eating the first.
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I grafted some Douglas scions onto pyrus betufolia in 2015 and they fruited for the first time this year i.e. 4 years later. P. betufolia is virtually indestructible and the scions grew like crazy the first year. The fruit is mild - sweet with a hit of spice - not the best-tasting pear ever but overall quite good. It is firm and would make a good canning pear which is what I am looking for - also a firm salad pear. Overall I like it. I highly recommend betufolia as a root stock but watch out. It creeps out of the pots from the bottom holes and will root on its own. Before you know it, you will have a huge and worthless pear tree with lots of thorns. It is not a very “user-friendly” root stock due to the thorns but it defines the concept of vigorous and hardy. It is very easy to root new plants (shoots come up from the roots) and you will have an endless supply of root stock from now until whenever you no longer need them. Unfortunately the fruit it produces is worthless - chick-pea size and not at all edible. The tree grows very rapidly and well supports the scion.
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Douglas lacks all the things that make it great but yet everyone who likes sour apples asks for this pear. Many who turn their nose up at sugary pears want this pear in large quantities.
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Douglas is heavy with pears this year and I have 4 trees. Seems I may need to graft some over at some point to something different. Looking forward to this welcomed crop of pears that will surely add heavily to our winter supplies.
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They seem precocious. I grafted a stick onto a dud of a pear last year and the stick has two pears this year…while the parent tree is mostly bare.
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Just realize that it is not sweet pear. I probably will remove the graft. Not a fan of sour/tart pears (or apples for that matter.
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I assume kieffer is a parent, so it wouldn’t be too surprising?
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It is sweet but think of the taste as more like an apple than a pear. Some people prefer them since they are very refreshing.
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Yes Duchess D’angoulme is believed to be one of the parents and Kieffer the other as everyone can read about above. If you read the glowing testimonials above from the previous generation it’s easy to see some people love the Douglas pear! The old timers made most of our modern fruit breeders look like amateurs. Ayer was one of them who developed several new types of pears like douglas. Ayer was no Van Mons but they all had their own claims to fame. At the time of its creation Douglas was very valuable because it gave people fresh fruit at a time of the year when they didn’t have it. Van Mons who developed pears like anjou would harvest pears unripe then let the pear rot intentionally knowing the impact it had on the seed. Modern fruit breeders cannot match their results. Unfortunately many things they did are lost to time. The Douglas pear might have been lost without programs like Corvallis.
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One of the questions I get about Douglas is how is the production? Bushels of pears come off these trees! They are late this year its October and I’m still picking bushels of fruit! Picked this bushel as a gift for @39thparallel today. You cannot out give Mike the guy sent me home with a load of apples. Interesting thing about the Douglas pear is its origins were actually in Lawrence which is Douglas County Kansas. The pear received its name from that location. The pear was never sprayed nor was any special treatment given to this pear at all.
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My graft labeled Douglas has one large pear on it. It is still very green. I don’t know if it would ever turn nice mellow yellow like yours.
The leaves are small and dark green. I wonder if it is a real Douglas.
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@mamuang
It is likely Douglas we will find out in November I bet. The ones I picked are a little early. Our winter was long last year so ripening dates are behind this year. Today is October 9th and many Douglas can still use a little more time on the tree. Your ripening times are always a little behind us.
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Any luck with it ripening yet? My pears are behind this year. Douglas are a mixed bag this year with some being very good and some blan. I’m going to blame the year. Drippin Honey and lots of other pears were equal in that many lacked the best flavor this year. We had a lot of rain and a very late winter than hung on an extra month. Some pears were completely unaffected and others have mixed results. @39thparallel your fairly close by, have you had any fruit that’s not at it’s best this year?
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@clarkinks I had no pears, no peaches and most off the apples I did get where not at there very best. Late frosts then a hot rainy summer is not optimal. Sounds bad but, I am looking forward to our next drought cycle. That’s when my river bottom orchard will shine.
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It is still hanging on. It is very large. I don’t know if it is a real Douglas. It does not look like yours.
Do you have a close up pic of it, 0keaee?
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