You will have Asian pears from August to October. So many you will not know what to do with them! They do make good juice with a Champion juicer with fine screen.
I’ve had 5 varieties of Asian pears over the years. Got rid of 2 of the losers and kept these + another Korean Giant. These are spectacular trees. All wildcrafted. Zero spraying and chemicals.
If a tree can’t produce fruit unless it is drugged up…it is out of here!
Way down here in 9a, I am still working through my first experiments at growing Asian pears.
I have one nursery bought 20th Century, Shinseiki, Hosui multi-grafted tree. It is a small tree. First year with each having some fruit.
The Hosui is stellar. Gorgeous, unblemished fruit. The other two…well I plan on removing the bearing wood and grafting over a few varieties in their place.
I have a larger tree in bad sun location that hasn’t even flowered, but I grafted over the following to the host Shinseiki: Korean Giant, Raja, Yakumo, Pa Li, Ya Li, Hosui, Shinko, Tsu Li, and Chojuro.
I am, coincidental to this thread, thinking the Raja and KG were the two I’d graft over.
If you only grow one and you live in the northeast, grow Korean Giant. You will have fruit from late Oct until spring if you store it properly. It gets higher sugar than any other I have tried, and what are Asian plums besides juice, texture and sugar? OK, I know there are some Chinese varieties at least, and probably others, that have some aromatics, but if they don’t get high sugar they aren’t as fun to eat for most people.
Bill
In your zone, I would think you could pick KG by early to mid Sept. I pick mine in Oct and sometimes, into early Nov.
Fortunately, KG has a long hanging time. Other shorter hanging time pears would have lost its crunchiness. I don’t like soft Asian pears. I save that texture for Euro pears.
KG is pretty late for me as well… maybe a couple weeks from now. The last Hosuis got eaten a few days ago, they were excellent! I could use a pear between KG and Hosui. I have a bunch of new ones I am trying so hopefully one of them will fill the gap. If not I will try a Raja.
I got a 10% crop on all my Asian pears this year thanks to spring freezes… it’s better than nothing, I can have a few of each variety.
I’m not a big fan of Asian pears, but my kids really like them, so I got two custom bench graphs from 39th parallel this past spring. I got Korean giant and honey Asian (drippin’ honey) based on the rave recommendations here and likelihood they will provide good fruit without spray. I might get a few crisp when ripe hybrid pears in the future like Turnbull, but if these two cultivars perform the way most people have said, and my kids are the only ones eating them, I think I should be set on Asian pears. Both are grafted to OHxF333.
I meant to write Asian pears, but there’s truth to the statement about plums as well. Neither species tends to be high in aromatics- I wonder why they haven’t been bred for that so much? It becomes quite important for culinary uses- although my wife loves using my KG pears in her Kimchi recipe- aromatics might be buried by the intense heat of the spices. Even the most popular Japanese apples tend to be high in sugar but not in aroma- think Fuji and Mutsu.
Everyplace is different. Only had fire blight 1 year from what I recall. Plums all got bad black knot and had to be cut down. You just gotta try things. Plant it and see how it goes.
Very, very seldom I don’t get bumper crops of Asians. When most everything fails, the Asians come through. I used to lose a ton of them to the rodents. But now I got to war early on them and pears do well.
This is my first year ever that they froze. The same thing happened on my pawpaws, I have a 10% crop there this year as well and that has never happened before. I’m not sure what happened in the spring weather but it really threw a curve ball. Even apples underset. Oddly some plums underset and some did their usual crazy overset, even early bloomers like Shiro vastly overset. Go figure…
Without making my yard an unsightly mess, I am space limited for sure. Plus I don’t need 1000 of any fruit, so I am ok with a branch here and there to test them out before committing.
I did buy a nice metal tag embosser, so yes they are all labeled!
