Today is July 13th and Harrow delight are heavy. I just picked a 5 gallon pale from one mature tree and a few i grafted in the last couple of years. They are bearing fruit for me in year 2 now when i graft them. In the top two photos is a round unripe pear i had to pick early known as menie. The bottom longer pear shaped fruits of the first 2 photos is harrow delight. The bottom pictures are unripe orcas pears i have a tree of that im researching. It is heavy with pears. It is one of my projects to record data from pears and release it later.
It doesn’t even bother me. It is all part of it here. Beetles release phermones, calling the others to a location. Their strength is their weakness. We can use their phermones and drop them in a trap if we want. We can use them for compost or fish food if we want. It is times like this a guy wished he still had a bunch of chickens.
Harrow delight are ripe the others are not yet. The others are experimental crops. Harrow delight even though it does get fireblight is one i grow in large numbers.
Last year I had a plague of western tent caterpillars. Even the chickens wouldn’t eat them. Fortunately they are cyclical and this year there’s not many.
I spent most of the day plucking them from my newly planted/grafted fruit trees for weeks on end last summer. I figured most of my new grafts would be goners from those ravenous beasties. My vigilance saved most of the new grafts but it was exhausting doing rounds to remove them. Spraying BTK was useless as there was just too many of them.
If I had to deal with that every year I don’t know if I’d be looking for another hobby. Luckily no fireblight, or leaf virus/fungus so far this year. Everything has been good except the plum aphids this year, and the ladybugs are finally starting to reduce their numbers now.
There is a lot to it growing fruit in Kansas. Many get discouraged and quit the first few years after the rabbit and deer get done with them. The determined ones usually stay for fungal diseases , strange weather and fireblight. There are very few people like @39thparallel@Olpea and myself who stick it out long term. I accept nature and i understand it. Nature is cruel to those who try to beat it. Those tent catipillars are easy pickings down low but they are bad in a 30 foot tree
Yes, from the sounds of the pressures in your neck of the woods you’d need an iron constitution to tough it out like you do.
I’ve been unusually fortunate this year as I did not spray at all through the fall/spring and things have been surprisingly good. I’ve had some black knot on my plums this year, but that’s not a huge problem in my area as long as you’re vigilant and keep on top of it.
Had a bunch of these July pears (that’s the variety name, unless I’ve mixed them up with Magdalene or Jakubky/Jacob’s) I’ve had for breakfast on a dog walk a few days ago. They’re from a tree on public land that I’ve taken scions from and grafted onto wild rootstock this spring. I now have to decide whether to plant one or both of the back up grafts still in pots. They are grest for fresh eating, jams (+ ginger & mint = best jam ever) and for drying - which can be done in sun this early in the season. I think I may be greedy…
Those do look nice. They kinda remind me of ya li pears in a way.
In case anyone wants to know more about menie. They are impossible to find publicly available. If you need scions i can make sure @39thparallel gets a bunch when he harvests other scions here. I dont know anyone else that grows them right now. I have never saw a nursery grow them. He does not grow them right now.
I’m going to check tags on the Canadian pears again. Make sure the fruit matches up and continue to test these varities. They grow fast and produce abundantly.
Harrow Delight still has not cropped for me. Harrow Sweet on the other hand is a machine. Anyone looking for a quick cropping pear needs a Harrow Sweet.
Harrow sweet is one year earlier producing than Harrow delight typically. Harrow sweet is a higher quality pear. Harrow sweet is more resistant to disease. Harrow delight is very early in the season and has a nice flavor.
I changed a lot of my varieties over to Sweet, Delight, and Red Bartlett a few years back because of their no fridge features. Of course I could never graft my beloved Comice trees over. I saved a few other storage varieties as well, but just didn’t have the fridge space for hundreds and hundreds of pears.
id get a army of guineas. they would fly up in your trees and eat themselves stupid on those suckers! when i had them they left my plants and fruit alone.
Pears must be the most reliable crop we could grow here. This new strain of fireblight is really nasty here. It hit me hard last year. I grafted many pears over to better varities for this area.
