At first I thought I was picking pears too early, but I made several pickings of the usually reliable Harrow Sweet and other pears were dropping from the tree when I did the last harvest of them. I had hoped they’d sweeten in cool storage, but most are not very good eating with a few exceptions. The Harrow Sweet have high acid and mostly low sugar and other decent sized pears are similarly disappointing. Maybe one in four are good eating. Only the reliable Seckel seemed to develop normal sugar for me this year.
Apples are not as dramatically low brix but they are not as good as normal. The mystery is that it was a relatively dry and sunny summer becoming quite dry by late summer to mid-fall. Brix should be through the roof this low precip year, but even plums were less than normal sweet.
My theory is more several possible theories. Heavy foliage or thick growth possibly shaded some of the fruit from getting sunlight? Mineral deficiency in the soil? Shortened growing season or weather that possibly damaged fruits when they were still immature? What happens to the fruit throughout their life is like our health dependent on weather and nutrition in our life.
Besides the weather, all management was as it has always been. The growing season was particular long due to the early spring that ended up costing me most of my stone fruit crop. In spite of the early spring, pears ripened at the same time as the previous season.
Some things are without explanation that we observe. Insects, weather, bacteria, fungus etc. all have influence over their environment. I’ve seen mysteries such as fireblight appear and disappear without explanation.
Can any of it be attributed to the the year previous? Could a tree, for example, have more stored carbs to contribute to the pear if the year before were particularly favorable?
And how much does brightness affect sweetening? Hazy conditions (around here it can be smoke in a bad forest fire year) might keep the sun from falling as intensely on the fruit at crucial times?
Obviously just guesses, but maybe something to think about.
In the past, brix has seemed always to be enhanced by low rain and that experience is enforced by specific research with deficit irrigation in the regions with dry growing seasons.
MarkNMT, I like the idea of reduced carbs in the tree- that is imaginative and logical (to me) at the same time.
May be the difference between low rain and drought is important. In our area we had level 3 drought this year. I understand how excess of rain can low brix, but when whole plant struggles, may be that is more important than number of sun hours… It is just my guess.
My pears were crappy this year. I attributed it to various reasons. Some of my pear trees were in decline and put on very little growth, I think because some mite issues. I had sprayed them with broad spectrum insecticides (like always) and felt like the leaves showed mite load this year. Some of the decline was clearly fireblight related though.
I finally cut down my mature Harrow Sweet tree, on it’s last leg, but liked the variety enough to have grafted some seedlings to Harrow Sweet this last spring.
Normally I sell a few pears, but this year I hardly sold any because of the quality. Strangely, I didn’t have the same issues with apples.
I wonder if Mark may be onto something. The problem pears had more leaf issues, whereas apple foliage looked pretty healthy all summer.
One thing I’ve noticed about pome fruits is that generally the sweetness isn’t affected nearly as much as stone fruits by rain. Anyone else see this? I’ve much less experience with pomes.
No, seriously, it makes me wonder if there’s a tendency for trees that have a year of great quality to follow with a season of mediocrity - perhaps because some essential nutrient is not as available as it would have been otherwise. This is a little like bienniallism but uh, different?
Annual variations in conditions would make it hard to track this, but there’s old-timers out there who might have a sense of it.
I have to agree with Marknmt. Sometimes a very good year is followed
by a crappy year. I had the same results as everyone else. Even watermelons
were mediocre this year. Mother Nature just decided to take a rest this year.
I’m thinking of the carbohydrates you mentioned Mark. Though as I mentioned, in my case I think there was too much leaf damage for the leaves to produce enough carbs. As you know trees store carbs as well as produce carbs during the growing season. I know with peaches both go into the fruit.
Mamuang,
It was in pretty rough shape because of fireblight. I had lost about 1/2 the tree last year and fireblight claimed most of the rest of it this year. I had grafted a couple extra trees in fear of losing the tree, and this season when it got fireblight again, I just decided to cut it down and start over (there wasn’t much left and the thing wasn’t growing at all - I think in part because of the mites.)
Sorry to hear about the loss of your HS. So far, mine seems fine.
Re. Pear blister mites, I know you sprayed. @scottfsmith advised that I use lime-sulfur right around bud break. It has worked great.
My HS does not hardly get mites but Blake’s Pride had it bad ( some on A pears, too). Since I’ve usied lime sulfur ( only one spray a year), mites are gone.
A lot of times I have sprayed some 1% oil during the growing season if I start to see mite damage. The oil seems to help a lot. I didn’t do it this year and let the mites run their course, which was a mistake.
Olpea,
Can you mix Sulphur with your dormant oil spray after leaf drop? I would think after leaf drop and before bud swell if you spray them it would wipe them out. Would it be ok to mix it with copper?
I think it would be safe to mix oil and sulfur in the dormant season. I believe the warnings of oil and sulfur incompatibility would be for the foliage.
I’m sure the oil and sulfur would be really hard on mites and probably completely wipe them out, as you mention. The problem is that mites have very short life cycles, so populations can rebuild very rapidly under the right conditions. There are plenty of unmanaged fruit trees around where I live, so reinfestation is a certainty.
This probably isn’t an issue for growers like Mamuang, but I spray quite a few sprays of pyrethroids during the summer, which can tend to cause mite outbreaks under the right conditions.
