Here comes the 2018 apple & pear harvest!

Once I’ve ripened the Douglas inside and ripened improved kieffer I will post pictures and compare those two. They both tree ripened around August 21st this year but remember then they ripen inside for a long period of time. If left on the tree they will break off and fall on the ground. They are very similar in growth, pear size, leaf appearance etc… A true kieffer should have a month or so left on the tree. Douglas blooms early similar to improved kieffer http://www.growingfruit.org/t/pear-buds-blossoms-and-fruit/9747. Duchess which is believed to be one of Douglas pears parents should then finish off the season in late September- November.

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Drippin Honey crop coming in strong! Lost 3/4 of the crop to cracking but the crop is still large enough. After a year of 6 inches of rainfall 2 inches of rain fell in a couple of days.

!

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Glad you mention DH cracking. This variety of A pear is prone to cracking the most among 6-7 varieties I have.

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@mamuang
I agree its typically not a big issue here but it has been this year. It’s always something to watch out for. Hosui cracked very badly as well at my location with 100% loss. Korean Giant has not had any issues so in an area prone to drought and rain perhaps Korean Giant is better.

I was about to say that for me, KG is the best Apear, tastes geeat, productive, cold hardy, minimal diseases, and has least crack ( if any).

20th century and Hosui have some crack. I have to re-check Sheiseiki, Kosui, and Ichiban how they fare.

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@mamuang
Agree completely! I really watched my back today in those drippin honey trees. DH is a delicious pear but I also like the ripening time and flavor of KG. Cracking DH fruit attracted these unwanted stinging guests. Thats not a small nest, I saw over 50 wasps but getting good photos was difficult lol! 294F2B10-DAFC-424D-97D7-1DEAAEA8AC1E


These are hosui

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That’s what my Flemish beauties looked like last year, total junk. So far, so good this year, but they have a lot of little black spots on them.

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I could not have a good look of all my A pears because I’ve used bird netting to make a fence around the whole back orchard. It is a pain to remove a section of it to get in there.

When it started raining about ago, Drippin’ Honey, some Hosui and some 20th Century, and maybe, Ichiban, too. I’ve not seen any cracking on KG, Shinseiki or Kosui.

Last year, all my DH cracked even though we did have as bad and as long rain like we do this year. I think DH should come with a warning that they can all cracked.

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Harvested a 5 gallon bucket of perfect drippin honey pears from my 3 trees and lots of small or half cracked pears that went into the box to try and see if I can salvage something from later. Most of the harvest was cracked very badly so I left it on the ground for the animals who are hungry. I must have eaten 40 half cracked pears while picking! These pears are very delicious!

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Huge amount of improved kieffer today! I picked a total of 7 five gallon buckets! These pears don’t produce as quick as some but once they go into production they are consistently producing a couple of 5 gallon buckets of pears per tree and I have 5 trees of them. My production will continue to climb for the next 5 years until these pears are at their full potential. These are a staple pear here. I’m nearly caught up with my summer pear harvest. This was a drought year and there was a late freeze so my harvest was greatly reduced but more trees came into production this year. Next year should be a monumental harvest!

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This is the first year I’ve gotten more than a few odd apples. This tree my first to ripen this year. They are Rome Beauty. They turned out really clean and shinny- a very attractive apple and I think they taste pretty good. They have a little more tartness than I prefer, but to each his own.

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@thecityman
That’s a very nice looking harvest , beautiful color, very clean, plenty of them!

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Nice harvest. Those apples are as pretty as they come.

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Love seeing all the pears that you pick although I feel a little inadequate when I sometimes only have ten or so total of a variety. Most of my early blooming pears like Kieffer/Improved got killed off this year from late cold weather but I do have about five hanging down. Looks like I have at least another couple of weeks before picking my big crop. Great pictures.

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@Auburn
Kansas is known for extreme weather eg drought, 100 degree heat , extreme cold -20F , tornado and even flooding at times but the hardest of all on fruit trees is our very high nearly constant winds. . In this type of country there is plenty if I plant things that can handle those extremes. If my orchard was not mostly pears I would not be harvesting a lot because it was a tough year here. Remember Bill your pears look pretty good to me this year. I’m always very impressed with your harvest. It might help if I explain why I grow so many which is to make sure we have fruit of some kind because all bets are off on getting fruit every year here. I’ve found ways to be more consistent as a professional fruit grower but this year I lost an entire Aronia crop worth thousands. I will likely lose my customers I established for that crop. My pears are grown on nuisance wild ornamental pear Kansas rootstocks or tough rootstocks. The nice thing about this land is if the tree lives 10 years+ it will always be fine until it dies of old age in 100 + years. If the droughts worsen we could lose established trees. I heard about a drought as a child the old men said came before the white men came to this land that was worse than the dirty thirties. Floods like the one in 1993 and in the early 1950’s happen here as well. Tornadoes can and frequently (as often as a town a year sometimes) do wipe entire Kansas towns from the landscape. Having grown up here I’m not naive to the ways of this land and growing things to survive. My parents were not from here and suffered many hardships because of that but taught me things about plants people from here do not know. In a pile of pears you see generations of wisdom that I’m trying to pass on to others while there is time. My family always grew fruit but were naive to modern farming practices but I use both their ways and modern ways. The crop this year was 100% grown spray free. If it’s a wet year that’s not always possible but it’s ok because even though I grew everything organic I’m not an organic grower I put on sprays when they are needed.

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Left to right:
A damaged golden russet: not ripe.
Frostbite: sweet, crisp, and one I’m looking to get more of when they’re fully ripe.
Bastion orange: sweet and syrupy, a little astringent but good eating this early in the season. Plus the orange flesh is kind of cool too.

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@SMC_zone6
Those apples have a lot of class! Can’t wait to see more of them in the future. Thought I had a great crop of apples this year when they bloomed but the drought and late freeze wiped most of them out. Bastion orange sounds like your favorite of the group. How is it doing on disease resistance and growth.

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I like Frostbite.

My Golden Russet is from Burntridge.
Do you grow both Golen Russet and Bullock?

My one and only Golen Russet is still on the tree.

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Love seeing an apple in a bag. Safe from most insect damage.

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I can see how they got their name.

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