@clarkinks
Does my pear look like Magness to you? Mine seems more stout than yours.
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A couple Magness came off the tree today when gently lifted. Is this about right time for Magness ripening in 7 A/B east coast?
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It generally ripens around mid of September in greater Philadelphia area. I usually store 2 boxes of magness in my converted freezer and eat till January. It’s a very good pear.
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Any suggestions on freezer conversion?
Magness is the least precocious pear I’ve ever tried to grow. I cut down my first tree before I became a grafter just out of impatience. I now have more patience and hope to harvest some fruit from some grafts before I die- I hope that doesn’t require more than a century of existence. For some reason I didn’t do any grafts towards the top of a tree so I could pull it below horizontal and speed things up- I will do that with secondary branches.
It is a very high quality luscious type pear resistant to FB, scab, and psyla. I have planted quite a few of the trees over the years and have harvested the fruit at other sites. It will rot at the core if allowed to fully ripen on the tree here, as I recall.
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I have Magness, which I grafted onto OHxF 513 sometime back around 2000. Probably 20+ ft tall, and has yet to bloom or fruit for me.
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Basically the same setup from people on this thread. If you need details, I will send pictures to you.
I am very surprised that my Magness pears fell yesterday. They look ready. I thought it would be a bit later than this.
Mine fell around the same time @hambone’s pears did and I am a zone colder.
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Do you usually refrigerate your Magness? If you do, do you put them in closed bags?
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I don’t but they would be even better if you did. Just put them in the crisper drawers there is no need to bag them. Comice has a much better texture in my opinion after refrigeration. That is a parent of magness and warren as your aware. They may have a little extra graininess near the core this year since they ripened until falling. That said they are very high quality. You will be hard pressed to find any better European pears. They taste good, they are disease resistant, produce within 5 years! The flavor is very nicely balanced. Some high quality pears like clara frijs lean heavily towards being creamy and at times overly sweet. I prefer potomac, warren, magness, harrow sweet, harrow delight, comice, concord , conference etc. Type pears with more going on than clara frijs has. My intention in saying that is not to discourage anyone from growing all these but rather factor in personal preferences when discussing high quality pears. Drippin honey , korean giant, and chojuro asian pears all have different attributes i like in different ways. Ya li is a totally different taste. An unknown mislabeled pear is an assault on my taste buds making sour cherries seem sweet but it is valuable for that sour taste in certain cases.
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My two are still hanging, they are not even completely sized-up, still about half the maturity size.
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This is my first year fruiting so I don’t expect a normal size yet. Also, my apple and pear trees got bad sooty blotch. Leaves and trunk are mostly covered. Some pears like Harrow Sweet just don’t size up at all.
I bagged a few Magness I have. They fell in the bags.
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I checked mine today and they are getting close, in fact some could probably be picked now. I go more by how soft they are on top.
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I think my Magness fell because of bug damage. I ate the first one today. It was quite sour. Had ithey not falken, they probably needed a few more weeks to bring sugar up.
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Not yet feeling any softening near stem end. Should be soon though; nice coloring.
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Yes, the coloring is also a great clue. Thats why I think mine could be picked now, some are getting golden. Maybe next weekend.
Crows are starting to destroy pears here now. Really hitting Shinko hard, and it’s a good month from being ripe. Checked on Warren a couple days ago… not yet ripe, but getting there… No fruits on Magness.
Chojuro dropping ripe fruits like mad… wish I had refrigerator space for them all.
I had a huge crow problem on my pears and various scares didn’t work… they were taking every single pear a few years ago. I finally found that fake dead crow scares do the trick. They look exactly like crows and I hang them from my pear trees.
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