Is it worth it to grow the Warren pear

DWN Warren on 333. Planted late last spring. Doing alright with blossoms just opening

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In drought areas full sized trees,really are the best. We had a drought where we got just 10 inches of rain in the fruit producing season in recent years. All of my wild callery pear rootstocks still had heavy amounts of size reduced fruit. Noone else at all in my immediate area got fruit. I realize a severe drought like that is an isolated situation in Kansas but that is exactly why i grow wild callery for rootstocks.

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The oil and oil prices really have to be

@Tomj welcome to the community. I believe this post may have been intended as a reply to someone or on another thread.

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My young Warren pear tree starting to leaf out.

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Warren is not ripe yet but the sugar is increasing finally. They are later than normal this year today is August 21st.


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If you talk about intentions to plant Warren Pear, be careful who hears you as you could go to jail :slight_smile:

http://pathology.med.upenn.edu/department/people/481/warren-s-pear

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:joy::joy::joy:

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Ate my first one a couple weeks ago. It started to develop some rot in the fridge so I ate it crunchy. Very sweet. Tasted kind of like a bosc at that point. I can imagine a perfectly ripened one would be awesome.

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Here in northern CA the Warren and Magness pears started falling the last week in August. I picked most of the Magness on September 4 and will try to pick the Warren today. I had a great crop on both this year. I should have thinned the Warren and lost several small limbs due to the heavy fruit load. Barry, if the fruit are rotting in the refer I think you are waiting too long to pick or your refrigerator temperature is too high. I have excellent storage for two months and sometimes longer but my storage refrigerator is set in the low 30s. Here are some pictures.

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Everyone has to experiment sometimes. Today is September 19th and clearly Warren has intentionally been left to long on the tree not improving the flavor just turning to mush. They will hang like this until golden. The wild animals on my property let me do experiments like this not easily done elsewhere. The wild animals eat many pears from the ground and are content with windfalls. Everything is living in peace as nature is in balance here. I’m finding the peak ripening times of many pears. These had their peak about 1 week ago.

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Coincidentally, I picked most of my Warren pears ~2 weeks ago. But I left a few on the tree. Some turned yellow, dropped, and were eaten by animals. But at least two were left. I pickled them today, still green but fully ripe. But even so, they were inferior to the pears picked earlier and ripened inside.

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A late response – I have Warren on OHxF333, planted in 2017. It fruited in 2020 and produced a nice crop this year 2021. FWIW, I bought the tree from Trees of Antiquity and it was very high quality, large and well-branched.

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Someone is bound to ask what a ripe Warren pear should look like. Here is one with some character to use as an example. They have an unusual red blush. They are a greenish gold when ripe. It’s not unusual to have a mark or two on them as they are very high in sugar content. These were harvested recently and ripened inside to perfection. I’m guessing that Mark was a PC strike from when the pear was very small or a bird might have pecked it due to that red color but it’s highly unlikely. So how do they stack up against other high quality pears you might ask? My personal rating would be an 8 or 9 this year out of 10. It’s very hard to beat any of these exceptional type pears for quality. Should mention all very high quality pears are different in flavor as well. What about the question is it worth it to grow Warren? My advice would be only if you have the room! Warren is not a heavy producer but Harrow sweet is and ripens at almost the same time. So why do I grow Warren you might ask and it’s because i do have the room and as good as Harrow sweet is its not Warren. Warren and Harrow sweet are completely different flavors in their own way. Potomac rivals both for flavor and also ripens at around the same time with again a completely different flavor from either one. Drippin honey is also ripe with a very different flavor also. They all rate in the 7-10 range depending on the year on a 10 scale.




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That’s looking good

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How is your magness this year in comparison? They have been extremely good for me this year. Even one that blew down early from storms.

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Magness and Warren are identical in flavor. So much so the flavor is a match. No doubt the trees are siblings .

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How did you train your Warren? Did you cut it at knee height when you planted it?

The tree I received was roughly 4’ tall and extremely well branched. I’m talking (from memory) maybe ~15 fairly thick branches. I knew that I should remove most of the branches but, right or wrong, I didn’t want to risk traumatizing the tree. I headed the tree at roughly 3’ and probably removed half (i.e. 7-8) of the branches, including most of the low ones. Over the past few years, I removed another half (i.e. 3-4, so now I have a manageable number of scaffolds (i.e., 4-5). These are moderately well branched. At this point, the tree is probably ~15’ tall and ~8’ wide with a fairly open center.

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I have one on order for next spring on the same rootstock, so was encouraged by your good results. I like to train all my trees to open center, but heard that I should leave pears alone so that I don’t delay their already late fruit production.

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