@clarkinks and @Auburn thank you. Will look forward to year two of HD.
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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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I do not have a Harrow Delight tree. I have HD graft on another pear tree. This is the first year of the HD graft that fruited. I waited too long to pick HD so the pear suffered internal rot.
I like Harrow Sweet pears. They are about to ripen now. I eat them off the tree and after a few days on the counter. No need to refrigerate Harrow Sweet.
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Yes i would agree with that. Harrow delight was ok the first year but not wonderful. It was very good the second year for me. Harrow sweet is very small but always very sweet and faster to produce. They produce in the summer and fall so they compliment each other.
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I had HS some going bad on the tree so I am ripening them in cold storage. I always prefer cold to the counter as they seem to never brown internally when ripened in cold. It is also how all the commercial growers do it. I do give them 3-4 days on the counter after time in the fridge. I don’t pick them all at once but lift up each pear and any one that comes off is picked … the rest wait for the next picking session.
My HD tree got squeezed out, it is next to Magness which grew much faster (Magness grows like a triploid apple). So no fruit on it yet.
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Truly delicious pear in this climate. Family who tried it today August 1st said it’s the very best pear they have eaten. It taste better than anjou or Bartlett. The problem is ofcourse I wasn’t feeling well this week. The green June beetles and Japanese beetles showed up and stole 95% of the crop. They are not the very best pear I’ve eaten but they are exceptional this year. They are much better than any store bought pear. We ate several pears already but here is the few we have left. The secret to properly growing this pear is they need weeks of 100 degree temperatures to sweeten them. Many were very large this year due to adequate rain. Highly recommend this pear if you live in a similar climate. Don’t grow this one in colder climates I’m told it’s not as good.
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That is Harrow Delight?
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Yes harrow delight are mostly this shape and size. Grow about 8 of these trees and planning to graft several dozen more rootstock over to this variety. Never seem to have enough of them. They take about 3 years to produce. They are considerably larger than harrow sweet. Harrow sweet ripens later closer to fall. The first crop will be smaller sized pears and not as good flavored. We ate these directly off the tree with no additional ripening needed inside. They take that after the Bartlett parentage which they remind a great deal of. The largest harrow delight was just over half a pound.
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Wow that sounds great!!! Thanks for sharing!!
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@clarkinks Thanks for the reminder to check on this 
Not quite ready yet here but getting close. I grafted a stick last year onto a frankenpear on fairly rich soil, and it’s making a couple of pears this year. The rest of the tree froze out with 18F temps during blooming, so it’s nicely cold tolerant.
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That’s them but I can tell that’s a colder climate so leave them as long as you can to get the sugars higher. The first year they were not fantastic here but improved every year since. It’s worth noting even the first year everyone enjoyed them. Yours are getting close but they hang for awhile. In the sun they will turn a greenish yellow on the tree. These pears I have a feeling are frequently picked way to early. Yours are beginning to change colors. Would do the tilt test frequently. Sometimes the first year you get fruit they drop or never fully ripen. Yours look like the exception.
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@clarkinks I’m guessing it will be soon, although the weather has cooled a bit the last couple of days. I’m glad you said something because I sure wasn’t thinking about checking this one graft with everything else going…although I knew it had a couple of pears growing. Parker and flemish beauty should be coming up fairly soon too. At some point I need to make a list of dates to motivate me to check on things!
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These pears were a definitely sugar bombs. Very good!
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