Here comes the 2024 pear crop!

@steveb4 My Dripping Honeys are all round, too.

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isnt dripping honey a asian? Stacey’s a euro.

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Yes. Drippin’ Honey is an Asian. Looks like this.

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Those DH look perfect. My family liked it so well they compare all the other varieties to it.

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Opinion UPDATE!
I have harvested almost all of my Asian pears, now. Only a few Rajas are left on the trees. In the past I have expressed my disappointment in the Asian pears’ flavor. However . . . this summer has made me change my opinion! This summer was kind to the few Asians I have on my trees. They had a lot more taste than I’d experienced before. Drippin’ Honey is ‘still up there’, but Hosui and Yoinashi are pretty close!

My Original Post.
I wish all fruit was as bullet-proof as the Asian pear is. They come out perfect - with little or no fuss. I have Raja, as well - also a beauty. The color is fabulous.
I need to take some good shots of those. They are a warm burnt orange color.
But, like your family . . . mine agrees that so far none come close to the Drippin Honey - in flavor!

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You can let a Korean Giant stay on the tree too long. Discarded some of it.



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Anyone have a Juicy Jewel tree bearing yet?

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A few days ago I harvested my first x sorbopyrus (Pyraria) Tatarova planted 12 years ago (it was about 2 at the time). It is one of the 8 Shipova seedlings from Prague botanical gardens and the only one to fruit. The fruit is more pear-shaped and larger. The flesh is creamy yellow and tasted like a Williams pear with sugar melon. Oddly enough those were not evenly blended but more like each bite tasted a little different. (I assume due to different stages of ripeness.)

The fruit was about 5.5m in the canopy and I ripped it off with my pole picker, hence the hole. It shouldn’t be so irregular either. It was 35% stone and unless it was caused by frost, I hope it’s something that can be solved by a bit of borax.

I’ve heard and read that the taste improves with the tree’s age, but I have to say I’m quite happy with what I sampled.


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Potomac and Harrow Sweet, one of each, deliberately planted too close together and pruned to stay under 15’…picked 90 lbs this morning, after a smaller picking last week, and there’s at least another tray or two left on the trees. That’ll feed the family for a month. I… really am grateful for these little workhorse trees.

That ends my season. I’m thinking about adding Douglas and Dana Hovey, unless anyone has better ideas for blight resistant varieties that would ripen in a month or two.

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@Itmaybejj

Duchess D’ Angoulme is a pear i would highly recommend for a later season crop.

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Surprising, I’m south of you and my HS still have white seeds. Which ones are Potomac in the pic?

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I have heard good things about Duchess in your threads and others here…I need to learn to graft so I might not have to pick just two…

I haven’t gotten a strong sense of how much Douglas and Duchess differ in harvest date and je ne sais quoi…just that they are related and both are late and good. I think you’re one of the few who have enough experience with both to help us all with that :grinning:

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Everything in my yard is weirdly weirdly early. I don’t know why but it’s consistent. We get less rain than towns in all directions; something to do with the hills around the Delaware River is my assumption.

They’re mingled, but the Potomac are the ones that have a bulge around a very short stem, and the Harrow narrows smoothly into a much longer stem.

And it always interests me that the Harrow ripens towards yellow and the the Potomac toward white.

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Duchess is a much later pear than douglas it’s child. Duchesse D' Angouleme Bronzee / Duchess D’Angoulme pear . @Itmaybejj even in our area where everything ripens ahead of schedule just like you because of the hot Kansas sun expect late crops into late September - November Picking the last frozen pears .@mamuang and i often have spoken about the difference in climates in two areas that are considered zone 6.

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Duchess and Dana it is then. Thank you.

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This years heat and humidity is the worst it has been in many, many years- makes it worse that there has been little or no rain. All the fruit is ripening ahead of schedule here as well. In fact the fruit is actually baking right on the tree. I have had some fruit get soft and sun scald, for the lack of a better term, to the point of rotting. The fruit is actually squishy on the tree. I have had several Abate Fetal pears like that on the sun side of the tree. Some of my apples have been baked like that as well. It is horrible to see fruit get this way.

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LOL. @Itmaybejj
Here we go again. I picked some pears from a graft which I had tagged as “Harrow Sweet”. But the pears look nothing like the pear you have, by that name! Just like the “Moonglow” thread . . .

“Will the real Harrow Sweet please stand up.” (Don’t know if you are old enough to remember that TV show . . . ‘What’s My Line?’)

Maybe a devout Pear Person, like @clarkinks can give us his opinion. ?

Here’s what I have. And these are from a graft - so it may have been mistagged.

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Oh @PomGranny those look like many of mine. There’s a lot of short/tall variation in mine. Here’s a crop into a pile on picking day; I think I can see three Potomac in here but all the long stem ones are Harrow Sweet:

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@PomGranny

They are harrow sweet with a less hot sun. Harrow sweet pears aka HW609

Harrow sweet will have a characteristic folding neck once in awhile like this just like yours

Harrow sweet has the same shape and ripens around the same general time. It is a match.

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Glad you asked that. My HS fruited the first time this year and it looks like yours. Had me wondering as well and it tasted a lot like bartlett.

@clarkinks Does HS have a bartlett taste?

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