Loquat and pear grafted onto hawthorn

[swincher]

@a_Vivaldi

Presumably, people living in zones where loquat is hardy but unable to produce fruit (so, like zone 7 through 9a) would be about to get a harvest off of it’s spring flush.

There was a discussion of this cultivar in the PNW thread previously, and I was able to dig up the full text of the original research paper. The TLDR version is that the spring/summer flush produced “inedible” fruit about 1/6th the size of normal fruit, that seem to have failed to properly ripen (at least they didn’t measure brix, etc, for those fruit like they did the others). Here’s the first post in that thread where I quote the paper, there is another quote a few posts below with more info too:

Growing loquats in the Pacific Northwest

I was able to get access to the full version and here’s a table that clarifies things, keeping in mind this was done in Spain so it might be different in Ireland or the PNW: [Screenshot_20230427-120611] The paper makes clear that the “flushes” are referring to new buds forming, so those are the 13 arrows with roman numerals on the first line. Also keep in mind all of group C produced inedible fruit.

As noted in that thread, it’s possible you could get them to ripen via thinning and/or removal of the flowers in the other flushes, but the researchers didn’t try that.