This is my first year to have fruit from my medlar. I’ve read about the bletting process and have taken the fruits inside now to ripen. I tried putting some in the freezer and then removing them. Some of the fruits are quite soft but when I open them to eat them, I’m finding that the inside is brown, dry and mealy and has virtually no sweetness. They seem to be going right from hard to mealy. I don’t see how they can go from this mealy state to the soft, gooey and sweet state that I’ve read about. Any ideas?
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I don’t have a medlar, but I think you just set them on the counter a couple days till they are soft. Similar to persimmon. Thinking about getting a medlar tree or two myself. Have you had any problems with them yet? How long did it take to fruit for you?
I just keep thinking back to ScottFSmith’s epic post “Just say ‘NO’ to medlars”…
I have one that’s two or three years old and made a few fruit for me this year. Before that I had two of them, but they got absolutely mauled by rabbits their first or second winter. Around here the leaves seem to have some sort of brown red blight or fungus or something that makes them look a bit rough by the end of the summer.
I just ate some medlars from my tree. We already had some frost so they are soft and non astringent. The texture is definitely not everybodys cup of tea, but they are pretty sweet. They taste better cooked with some citrus and spices added in my opinion but I don’t have enough for that yet.
I remember that I had some pretty bland medlars in the past when I ripened them on the counter. Maybe I picked them too early or they didn’t develop right on a young tree.
maybe a bit late but here is a helpfull answer.
The fruit should be left on the tree untill it starts to drop automatically. at that time you can harvest all your fruit. Normally you would keep the medlars in a wooden or cardboard case on a bed of straw in a cool place indoors or outside but preferably frostfree or nearly so. You can speed up the bletting process by putting your fruit in the freezer for 10min or so just so that the skin gets slightly frozen but no more than that. Actually it isn’t really necessairy but it can get things going… You should not deepfreeze the entire fruit because this destroys the cells in the fruit and it wil just make the fruit go off.
A good ripe naturally bletted medlar hast a taste of Apple sauce with a hint of cinnamon.
Wild medlar has small fruit, very juicy and a lot of acidity. cultivated medium sized medlars are much sweeter, somwhat less jucy but actually a perfect balance. The giant fruited medlars are actually worthless in my opinion because they ave little flavor and they are extremely dry. Most of this giant fruit will not even blet as they should but just go bad because of dry rot…
So the best thing is to plant medium sized fruit and just be patient and let the fruit blet naturally.
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