Here comes the 2019 pear harvest!

How do you ripen pears clark ? I have abyssmal failure at ripening pears

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All of the ones i grow i ripen on the tree until i tilt them up and they break off. In my area insects are gathering around the trees by then. I mass ripen them in one bunch keeping a close eye out for signs of rotting pears.

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I donā€™t have a cellar yet, would you refrigerate them or counter ripen given those two options? I have seckel and doyenne du comice if it helps and i also have part of my neighbors what he believed to be bartlett but is maybe keiffer?

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Counter is fine with most pears but comice, bosc and a few other very high quality pears benefit from the refrigerator. When in doubt ripen half in each location and then your sure from that point forward. Normally i dont grow many pears that are that much trouble because i grow so many and dont have refrigeration for large numbers without asking a favor or two. @39thparallel has plenty of cold storage so if that changes in the future i do have some options. Ideally i just keep things simple with low inputs.

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Thanks. I bought the tree from a nursery in north Florida (Plant Me Green), so I may have to check out their inventory to see what it might be. But, I donā€™t recall them selling Harrow Delight. Since theyā€™re a southern nursery I imagine itā€™s a variety that does well in that part of the country.

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Thank you! Maybe i will just try the refrigerator because mostly what i have done is counter ripening and almost all just donā€™t ripen. It makes my wife protest me planting more pear trees since they all go bust and fireblight is my biggest disease and issue so im hesistant to try more. You have made me want to try asian pears by your descriptions, is there one you think that would stay smallish and avoid fireblight? I like the juicy pear flavour and every supermarket asian pear i have eaten has been worse than mealy and bland! Still not going to hate on a fruit for there commercial counterparts, maybe i could graft a pollinator to it although there are plenty of landscaping pear trees around here to spread the FB and pollinate. These two trees have lived and had less issues than my apples for FB and quince rust.

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@RichardRoundTree Drippin Honey is a sweet delicious crisp and juicy asian pear. I think you would enjoy very much based off your preferences.
@subdood_ky_z6b no its the wrong time of the year for harrow delight but there are many that have those genetics. There is the question also what was old home a cross of and noone knows. An interesting article about the rootstocks we use Old Home x Bartlett? | Good Fruit Grower. We use them for many crosses thanks to Mr. Buckman and Reimer and the much loved USDA ( so thankful for all they do for pear farmers like me by preserving varities). .

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Thank you again

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Well, after looking at pics on their site, Iā€™m starting to think it looks more like a Pineapple pear! They only have about 7-8 Euro pears on their site, and Iā€™m pretty sure itā€™s not a Bartlett, Baldwin, Kieffer, Flordahome, Tenn, or Orient. It kinda looks like a Hood, but thatā€™s supposed to be a softer pear. Maybe this tree is the Pineapple, and the other is an Orient.

@coolmantoole grows a bunch of southern pears, so curious to what he thinks.

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Just ate a Winter Nelis that I picked about three weeks ago, chilled for two weeks and then left out to finish. Melting, juicy, not very much grit, average flavor (but without any real summer I guess thatā€™s to be expected) and very close to turning brown in the center, but still edible throughout. A pretty fair pear all things considered.

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Richard,
When you talk about ā€œpear tasteā€, do you mean Euro pear? If so, Iā€™d like to mention that Asian pears do not taste like Euro and do not have the same ā€œpear flavorā€, either.

A pears are crips, juicy and sweet (some more, some less). They do not have a complex flavor or even aroma like good Euro pears do.

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I would definitely be going for that euro aromatic pear taste. I have never even tasted a A pear that i would put on a salad nonetheless eat outright. The ones i have bought have fed my dogs and compost sadly. I usually only enjoy sweet with tart but bavays gage plum and dates have taught me differently.

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What do you think, Seckle? This is one of 2 pear trees that were on my property when we bought the place. Unfortunately this one is close the fence, so the tree rats take them all. Last year was the first time to bear for us. I donā€™t water it at all, and we are semi-desert here. When you bite into it the first taste is heavily complex and very sweet, but that is followed up with immediate astringency. This is one of two I got before the tree rats did. I put it in the fridge, Iā€™ll take it out in a couple weeks and see if it ripens more on the counter. Last year the fridge and all the counter time they could take had no affect on the astringency. Maybe watering the tree will yield different results in the future too, I donā€™t know. Itā€™s in an area that needs a lot of work that I donā€™t really have time for yet. Tons of common buckthorn, chokecherry, and ash competing with it.

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That does not look like seckle to me. Im not sure what it is yet but i am thinking it over. Do you have a picture of the leaves? Seckle was ripe here about a month ago.

Update
Actually i just noticed your zone is 5b so perhaps its seckle afterall. They typically are smaller overall than your example and grow in clusters. See the photos below. Not all the pears in the picture are seckle but the red blushed pears are seckle. I should have saw your zone before posting a response.



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Well, it may not be seckle then, it certainly doesnā€™t bear clusters.
These are the leaves.

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Hereā€™s the other tree. They will be ready to pick in a week or two, same as last year. They are just getting a bit of sweetness now and still very crispy. The lumps are from hail when they were ping pong ball sized, they got beat up pretty good but didnā€™t drop. No stone cells, juicy, better flavor than most from the store, they get red blush where they get sun, and turn yellow and soft the more they ripen. The branches with just a few produce real big pears. The shapes are pretty variable, some remind me of Comice, others Bartlett, and then some a bit more round; but they ripen all the same and taste the same. The other half of the tree was callery that I grafted almost all the branches over to 6 different varieties

Any ideas on this one?
Both my trees havenā€™t had any problems with FB, though I see some strikes on some trees of a neighbors just up the valley.

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Clark, do you have any idea what variety the second tree could be?

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Im going to look closer at the photos but that rounded shape is typical of kieffer as is the somewhat rounded ball on the end stem where the pear is removed from the tree. The leaves are a tip off so i will look closer a little later.

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Had to pick them a bit early due to storm that came in., 13 F and about 4" of snow.

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Amazing the differences year to year. Granted we had about a month less of summer. Overall the pears are 30-40% smaller than last year and not as sweet/flavorful. Last year very little stone cells and this year there are tons, not to mention the hail damage; every hail scar has a pocket of stone cells under it and some of those cells are quite big. This year the skins are wrinkling in storage already too. The only real plus is with zero spray there is almost no coddling moth damage at all, last year about half the crop was damaged.
I dried a bunch the other day that didnā€™t get the fridge and were just chilling in a box on the garage floor. Pretty good stuff, way better than letting them get over ripe!

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