As my grafted pears are not fruiting yet I have been buying pears from the grocery store. I have never eaten a lot of pears but hearing some of the taste reviews of pears here really made me interested in finding a really good tasting pear. I would purchase a different type every week when we went to the store. Last week my wife bought a bag of green Anjou pears. I can’t stop eating them. They are small but have a great flavor and are sweet and juicy. I like them as much as my tree ripe peaches.
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Store bought pears can be quite good! Pears often lend themselves to being harvested early and shipped cold, ripening for the consumer. And Anjou pears are good, no doubt. We sometimes get really good Seckels here, but you never know from year to year.
To be fair, I have to say that you can sometimes buy very, very good apples in your local grocery too, especially this time of year. Jazz and Jonagold are two of my favorite store bought apples, for example.
Yes, you are right, I have bought some very good apples this fall also, but I’m a bigger fan of the pears. I like fruit that is juicy and a good pear really fits the bill.
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I also like this pear and they are always available at my local stores. Occasionally I see one listed as a Red Anjou pear and to me it is even better tasting.
They had a red pear called red Anjou but it was not as sweet to my taste as the green. Of course, I have no idea of the conditions they were grown and harvested in.
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I’ve had good and bad from most of the common varieties. It seems like Comice has been consistently good for me. I like Bosc when they are sweet. The texture is smooth.
I have a bartlet and starkcrimson red ripening on the counter. Should I chill them in the fridge first and then counter ripen them?
Costco here has been getting Comice for ~$1.50 a pound. I think I’m 12 lbs in so far.
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I like crunchy pears and soft and luscious pears. To me Comice is the queen of luscious and one I don’t believe I can grow here in NYS. I experimented with Highland for a long time trying to get a similar pear (Comice is a parent), but it is too difficult to grow and often cracks from rain.
When I used to buy pears, Bosc was my favorite pear to eat when crunchy. Now I grow pears that can be eaten either way and I’ve got plenty in my fridge that are firm ripe and will likely have to be eaten one way or another in the next month. They are Sheldon, Duchess and mostly Harrow Sweet.
I was raised in CA and have never eaten an Anjou I considered divine. Maybe the growers have improved at harvesting them at a better state of ripeness. I haven’t eaten any from a grocery store for years but they are an inferior pear off the tree here, in my experience, because they don’t get up the full sugar.
D’Anjou is a great pear. Luscious juicy and acidulous. Too bad it’s fireblight prone.
The Potomac pear is fireblight resistant, descended from D’Anjou, and said to taste a lot like D’Anjou. I will be getting scions of Potomac from a forum friend in the coming months so I can try to grow it.
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I like Anjou as well but after tasting Forelle earlier this year it’s my new favorite. It seems to ripen much earlier though.
Because of this thread I picked up some comice pears at Costco today. They really are excellent. Best pear ive ever had, beats the pants off barletts.
My Comice are ripening in the fridge. I had to sell most before they went too soft. The Bosc are holding up better and are a firmer pear. I like Bosc better than Comice as grown here.
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I ate the starkcrimson today. It was not as sweet to my taste as the green Anjou but it had a flavor that I liked that made up for its lack of sweetness. I have a bosc that I ripened on the counter and put in the fridge to chill today. It should be ready to eat tomorrow. I ate a Bartlett yesterday, but it was a bit flat, neither sweet or flavorful.
If you like Comice try Taylor’s Gold. It is a sport of Comice and excellent. It’s russeted like bosc.
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Fruitnut I know I have talked about this before but I still can’t believe you are getting fruit from comice and bosc in Texas. Amazing! I would love to see what would happen if you grew those pears in your gh.
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I’ve thought about that but have higher value crops for the GH. Did grow apples in their once. Quality wasn’t as good as outside. I think too hot and not enough water in GH.
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Fruitnut im going to try a few of these recommended varities this year and we’ll see how they do on callery rootstock. I know bartlett and quince are not directly compatible so when i grafted quince this year i tried most of it on callery with one exception as a test. I tried potomac on callery and bartlett.
Today, I purchased some Taylor’s Gold pears from Wegman’s that were grown in New Zealand. The tops yielded under thumb pressure, and they smelled ripe.
I ate one, and it was just as Murky described: russeted sport of Comice more reminiscent of Bosc.
It had a thick skin I did not particularly like, but the inside was sweet and juicy-- an intensified syrupy sweetness more akin to a dead-ripe Bosc.
Apparantly, these pears can grow well in rainy climates. The Pac Northwest is finding success with them.
Is anyone growing this pear in the Northeast? I wonder if it would be prone to fireblight just like Comice…
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Matt,
This is an interesting article about Taylors gold http://www.goodfruit.com/taylors-gold-excels-in-wet-areas/. This link contains additional info if you decide to grow it http://www.goodfruit.com/taylors-gold-seems-prone-to-reversion/
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