As many know I simply love this pear. It has its issues but flavor has never been one of them. This year was very hectic for me and I never got my pruning done or for the first time, thinning. And an odd thing happened I had a bumper crop. In looking at where Harvest Queen fruited I noted it fruited like crazy on year old wood, which surprised me, son of a gun seems to be a partial tip type bearing pear. Also it seems it self thins to an extent unlike a pear like Harrow Sweet that has lot branches break due to the overabundance of fruit, most of which is way undersized due to lack of thinning.
Anyways my Harvest Queens were so scrumptious this year. They tree ripened and I hardly lost any to rot, though many to wasps. Just a wonderful, creamy, melt in you mouth texture
This is too small and with far too thin a skin to ever be a commercially viable pear, but given it ripens over 3 weeks plus, it makes a great garden pear.
I don’t drink but I apparently got plastered one night from some Harvest Queens that had fermented. on the tree - lol.
Wow, that sounds like the kind of pear I should look into!!
Do you think it would do well in SW Mo. (zone 6b)? We get a lot of rain here… at least compared to Neb/Wyo/Mont, where we used to live!
Would the muggy, warm type of climate be okay with a Harvest Queen, do you think?
It is from the Harrow program so it handles fire blight well. I am in the midwest also, hot and humid also, though more 5a. It ripens late July to mid August here.
I am 6b central kansas my 2nd year graft has been among my most vigorous. Very good grower. The second latest to leaf out this spring making me hope it is above average for our late spring frosts…
Thanks for your feedback! This is one pear i plan to add another tree of!
Check cummins nursery this October± for spring order inventory… I think Harvest Queen is among the best, and perhaps also Harrow Sweet, Harrow Delight, Potomac too those are some I am growing here in kansas that sound really good for the midwest.
Thanks for the recommend, Paul!
I went and took a look at their site, and while there stumbled on to their historic apple varieties, and accidentally identified the old apple tree in the back yard here at the farm… it’s clearly a Roxbury!
That’s been a puzzle to us for a while… well, about 5 years, since we moved to this place!!!
It was here when we moved to this farm in '16, and it’s clearly been here for a long, long, time. It is BIG around!
As far as doing well… yes, I’d say that it clearly does.
So we like it??? Umm… not so much! Those things are TART!!
Not like “oh, nice tart apple with tons of flavor!” but more like “Yow! That is sour stuff!”
I’m thinking of trying to take some cuttings and see if they’ll root (no loss if they don’t, win if they do! ) and then anticipate perhaps grafting a sweeter kind on if they thrive?
Been poking through the “what did you do wrong when you were starting” conversation, and that " shoulda planted Everything, and grafted what was wanted after it did well" struck a chord with me!
I’ve never grafted anything, (my family is livestock folk, not tree people! ) But we love fruits, and living in SW Mo. is the most “fruity” place I’ve lived in my life so far.
So we’re tackling new challenges.
Have you had a harvest from your Roxbury? What’d you think of the taste?
The only bad thing I can say about Harvest Queen is that it’s slow-growing. I only regret that I didn’t order a more vigorous rootstock.
Somehow it’s a reliable setter of fruit even though it has a typical early bloom time like most pears.That’s usually a huge issue in my Rocky Mountain foothills location. Be careful to keep it from bearing until it’s a reasonable size.Might as well be a crabapple on that front.
Not in pears from the Harrow series. Apparently they select for it. Probably because quince is not appropriate for areas in Canada where pears are grown commercially.
I’m in a different part of the country, but the Roxbury Russets I’ve had have been excellent. My understanding is that it should be sweet with a background of tart, not all tart all the time, and that’s been my experience with the ones that I’ve had (not yet from our own trees). To me, what you’re describing would suggest that the apples are either not ripe or not Roxbury. (Or possibly, that they need to mellow in storage, but I didn’t think that Roxbury was that tart even right off the tree.)
Edit: Checking the Cummins description, it does say that Roxbury is “almost inedibly tart” when first harvested. I’d encourage you to try storing the fruit to see if the flavor improves (it definitely should, and can be really delicious - one of my wife’s favorite apples).
Huh? Not my experience with Rox at all, and I have grown it at many sites. Sugar and acid right off the tree and more sweet than tart. Good, not great, but what a producer! I have one client whose main reason for growing apples is to produce copious quantities of apple sauce. Ever since his apples failed one year and I brought him a couple hundred pounds of Rox, it has become essential in his recipe, the most important one in his mix. Like Newtown is in Martinelli’s sweet cider.
That’s what I was thinking, and happy to have it confirmed.
This may be just a matter of taste, but I have had Roxburys that were really outstanding, right up there with the best I’ve had in my admittedly more limited experience.
Yes, I think we’ve been approaching the handling of harvest all wrong for this variety. One of the reasons it’s super exciting to finally have a angle on what it Actuallly IS, so we can start understanding things we could do differently to maximise a better flavor.
The really bell-ringing clue was where the description said the tree “needs to be harvested promptly as it has a tendency to drop,” and Boy, Howdy! does our tree drop! Like a blizzard… I’m not even sure what “ripe” looks like on this, 'cause it’s shedding apples from August on.
(And those are just "YOW! sour!)
We’ll have to play with trying to store some… and see how those change.
It does seem like the ones which do hang on long enough to take on some part color, kind of turn a bit mealy, so I’m not sure if that’s a harvesting problem, or if there are Other varieties similar to the Roxbury in these particulars?
A mystery! But one at least we’re closer to solving.
Here’s a pic of the tree… last month, I think this was taken.
When we moved here, the tree had terrible beetle infestation, but pasturing the chickens underneath it wiped out that problem fast!
The apples were also super small… but after my parents did a couple prune jobs on it, this now comes in with apples larger than my fist.
I’d welcome ideas if anyone knows what it might be besides Roxbury!
You have much more experience with the apple as grown in your location. I believe heirlooms tend to be much more variable based on site than most modern apples, which are bred to create a similar apple in very different conditions, it seems.
Baldwin ranges from being world-class in my opinion to mediocre- and that’s a matter of locations very near each other, but it also applies to differences and changes in climate. Tom Burford says it used to be an excellent apple for the hills of VA until it got too hot.
Incidentally, I have a client with old Macintosh trees that have outstanding fruit- better than any Macintosh I’ve tasted before. They look slightly different with many of the apples having a dull yellowish caste- much the way the sweetest nectarines do. They aren’t eye candy and also show some resetting, often an indication of higher sugar.
Roxbury russet when juiced is very thick concentrated apple flavor. It is like no other apple i have had regarding fresh cider. When making cider most people will find it necessary to cut it with another apple juice. That allows it to be identified easily.
