Sorry about the cracking but glad your getting some much need rain.
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Are you apple trees doing as well as the pear trees during the drought?
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No the apples are far from doing well but I will have some. Many apple trees had all the apples drop. Haralson is the only one doing well. The harrow delight in the photo was delicious!
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Everything ive seen so far out of harrow delight is positive. Like harrow sweet its disease resistant and its nice because it ripens early.
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Starting to love harrow delight! Quick to produce, easy to graft, taste is good for an early pear, disease resistant, productive as well! Why isnt every home orchardist growing this tree? Its unlikely i would be growing this pear now if not for the good advice and support of other long term forum members. This picture is of a 3 year old harrow delight grown without special care in a wet spot on callery rootstock in poor clay soil. These are grown spray free. Thank you!
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Clark,
Your Harrow Delight pic in post #9 looked quite different from the pics post #14.
My looked like this.
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@clarkinks,
I put my HD on a counter for 3-4 days. Today I cut up the first one.
To my surprise, It had internal rot. Outside was not yet soft. While the flesh was smooth, it had little sugar. Brix was only 11.
I cut up 3 more. All were the same, internal rot. Only the last one had a bit of sugar with brix at 13 but far from good.
I start to wonder if I have a real HD!!!
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This is what they look like when they are ripe. I believe you do have a harrow delight but i did not find them fantastic the first year. Next year should be better for you. Mine were better this year. I think high sugar comes from growing in hot weather much of the time. Some things are location related. Hosui does not taste great here in my opinion but i have heard from others they love it at their location. Harrow delight should be more yellow when ripe.
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This year we have had very good fruit ripening weather. It has been dry and hot, almost no rain for several weeks.
If this weather produced this poor quality of HD, it made me less hopeful for next year.
My first year Harrow Sweet tasted very good right off the gate.
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Different locations can yield different results but i would be patient they are delicious here! If you remind me next year i will send you some.
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My Harrow Sweet was also very good the first year but some of my other varieties have improved each year. I think the improvements in my case is from more mature trees and better timing as to when to pick for the best taste. I’m following the Harrow Delight post and I’m hoping that it does well in my area. A little off topic but my Korean Giant was underwhelming the first year but has developed into a family favorite.
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Harrow delight is much more accessible to me, but I’ve been shy planting it because everyone seems to rave about the Harrow sweet over the Harrow delight.
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@Martin
Harrow delight tasted as good or better than harrow sweet this year and was twice the size. Harrow delight seems like a great pear for Kansas! @Olpea how were your harrow delight this year?
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I like Harrow Delight quite a bit. I’ve grown it for quite a few years and agree with pretty much everything on this thread about it. It’s slightly smaller than Bartlett, but shaped like Bartlett. Very nice buttery texture, with sweet flavorful flesh.
I only have one producing Harrow Delight tree, but I like it enough I grafted and transplanted more in the last couple years.
However, this year it was a complete boondoggle. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t get but very few pears I could sell off the one tree, which had a bunch of fruit. The reason is that I let the fruit get over-ripe and before I knew it, I had soft pears on the tree which looked like Tippy’s pic in post 16.
Most European pears can’t ripen on the tree. If you let them ripen on the tree (like I did this year) they ripen at the core first. Then by the time the rest of the pear is ripe, the core is brown and yucky. Most European pears must be counter ripened to avoid this problem. I generally wait till the very first pear starts to ripen on the tree. I throw that pear away and pick every single pear on the tree that same day. All the rest will be green enough that they will counter ripen quite nicely.
I missed it this year on my one producing Harrow Delight pear tree. We were just so busy trying to get all the peaches picked before they got over ripe, that I didn’t pay much attention to the pear tree at my house. Finally my wife said something about a tree which had a bunch of pears on the ground. They were virtually all ripe on the tree. I probably only got a couple dozen which were still green enough I had enough confidence I could sell them as good pears which would ripen properly.
I did try a few which didn’t have much brown in the middle and they were very good as usual.
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Mark,
Picking the first ripening pear and throw it away and picking the rest to ripen them on a counter is a funny but helpful tip.
My first Harrow Sweet is about to ripen, I should follow your approach 
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Tippy,
I don’t have experience with a lot of varieties, but that’s how I do it with mine. I’ve read others counter ripen just about all their Euro pear varieties with the caveat that some people recommend refrigerating the green pears for about a week before counter ripening.
I lost my one Harrow Sweet pear (have a replacement planted) but that’s how I ripened those pears too.
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Is everyone pruning their Harrow Delight as central leader or open center? How does Harrow Delight respond to your style of pruning?
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How did your second year of Harrow Delight fare?
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It sounds like Harrow Sweet tastes better than Delight the first crop year, but Delight seems to improve with tree maturity from what I’ve read. Do you think this is true?
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