no whey!
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I’m happy to see this post as I love my medlar trees and think they are underappreciated.
They have been my 2nd lowest maintenance fruit trees, after pawpaws. My trees have been in ground for 5 yrs now & have never had any disease issues and only very minor insect pests like aphids that only feed on leaves. No insects eat or bore into the fruits, which is awesome. However, I do have fencing around my trees to keep them safe from deer (deer don’t seem to notice the fruits but I wouldn’t be surprised if they would eat them) & I’ve never had an issue with fireblight or quince rust in my area, which medlars can be susceptible to.
Some other aspects that I like are:
- The time of year they ripen. They typically start ripening here in late November or early December. I LOVE this since it is well after the vast majority of other fruits that ripen in August-October. I agree that the best way to let them blet is to just let them hang on the tree. It’s easy to tell when they are fully bletted/ripe since they turn a darker shade of brown and turn soft.
- How well they keep in cold temps. I always leave a bunch hanging on the trees through winter because I can snack on them whenever I’m outside throughout the winter season. I ate the last of last years crop in March this year, which were still hanging on the tree. Many do fall off soon after ripe, but some hang well through winter and aren’t fazed by freezing & thawing for that long.
- Growth habit and ornamental value. On quince rootstock they stay fairly small and manageable, yet they are vigorous growers and branch out nicely. The small size is nice when it comes to protecting them from late spring freezes. The full blooms and look of the spring leaves are really pretty and make the trees look rather ornamental in spring.
- Precocity and productivity. Medlars are very precocious so it doesn’t take long before you start to get flowers & fruit from them. They seem rather productive to me but may be leaning slightly biennial due to how heavily they can produce some years & susceptibility to late freezes in other years.
- Taste. They taste like apple cider or apple butter and are fairly easy to eat when I’m outside working & grab a few to snack on. I just squeeze the pulp into my mouth & spit out the seeds. They also make a killer jam. For the jam, I add sugar, a bit of cinnamon, vanilla, and sometimes lemon juice, but the flavor is quite good on its own without the added flavors. No pectin is needed.
The aspects that I don’t like about medlars are:
- How early they push growth in spring. They are possibly the earliest of my trees to leaf out in spring, which can make them more susceptible to late freezes. The new growth is more cold and frost tolerant than pawpaws & persimmons at least. They surprised me this year by coming out unscathed during a freeze down to 27 or 28 F in late April. They were fully leafed out & even pushing flower buds at that point. Last year a late April freeze that hit 27-29 for 2 nights in a row that didn’t cause any apparent damage to new growth but they suffered delayed damage to the undeveloped flower buds. I covered 1 of the trees which allowed it to fruit well, but the other 2 didn’t produce much. The May 9th freeze down to 25 in 2020 killed all the new growth tips & prevented fruiting, but nearly all my fruit trees suffered from that.
- Processing the pulp. This is a chore to do. I have a foley mill that I’ve used to process them before, but I had a problem with that since I noticed the seeds were getting shaved a bit into the pulp due to the odd shape of the seeds. The seeds are quite hard and have an odd and bumpy shape to them, which makes the fruits difficult to mill. It could be that I was just milling them too much to try to get all the pulp through, but it was still pretty rough trying to mill them. Medlar seeds (like apples, pears, and stone fruits) contain hydrocyanic acid, so I don’t want to be consuming that. Now I just do it the more tedious way by boiling the fruits with water, mashing, and passing through a colander/strainer. I do skin them beforehand, since that helps them strain faster, and skinning them is easy since I just squeeze the fruits so the pulp and seeds separate right out of the skin.
As far as differences between varieties, I can’t say too much as I only have Puciu Mol and Breda Giant. BG has larger fruit, which is a nice trait for medlars since you don’t get much pulp from smaller fruit due to the large seeds. They don’t differ much in flavor but I do prefer the taste of Puciu Mol since it is more acidic, which makes it taste more like apple cider rather than a mild apple butter. The Breda Giants seem to go bad in warm temperatures a bit more quickly, as I more often find some of those that smell moldy or spoiled. I always smell the fruits (after I break the skin) before eating them, as some do go bad and will have an obvious moldy or spoiled smell to them even though they look the same as good ones. My Puciu Mols have also been more vigorous growers than Breda Giant and will branch out more. PM looks like they produce more fruit and that could be due to the stronger branching habit, but Breda Giant likely produces just as much in pulp due to their larger fruit size (which lends to easier processing). They both seem equally precocious.
Sorry for the excessively long post. I’ve been wanting to write down my thoughts on medlars for a while now and this seemed like a good post for it, so thanks for making this thread, hobilus!
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Spring blooms.
Puciu Mol in early October.
Breda Giant in early October.
Picking up fallen fruits in mid November.
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not at all, thanks for sharing!
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I find the best ones have some acid to make the flavor richer. They seem to vary in quality and flavor somewhat even on a single tree. Some are surely better than others. Im still learning. The fruit paste is great when used similarly to mebrillo. It makes an awesome spread or appetizer paired with cheese and crackers. Also really good on or with meat.
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How old are those trees in the pics? About 5-10 pounds of crop per tree?
In the uncommon fruit category I rank these second. American persimmon first, Medlar, and then Pawpaw. Still don’t have quince to judge.
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They have been in the ground for 5 years now after buying the young grafted saplings from Cricket Hill Garden, so maybe a year or 2 older than that. I’m not sure exactly how much they produce per tree, but 5-10 lbs sounds like a good estimate. I know when I made jam I ended up having 3.25 lbs of pulp after processing about half the total fruits from 2 of the trees, which ended up being 5 jars (12-20oz sizes) of jam.
Agreed, all 3 of those are low maintenance and have nice fruits. Persimmons have been frustrating for me since the Americans have been very susceptible to late freezes over the last 4 years and my NG hybrid has had issues dropping fruits. They grow well though and don’t have many disease or pest issues.
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Has anyone tried processing these using a Squeezo and a larger screen? I use a Squeezo for applesauce which I just quarter and boil down a little bit. For that, it works like a charm.
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I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone on here from a 4a growing Medlar. It seems like I used to always see it as zone 5 hardy, so it wouldnt be too surprising if there were a cultivar that you could keep alive in a protected location – but I suspect you’d need a rootstock hardier than quince provence. I’m putting a couple in (z 5a/b just West of Madison) and I’m not worried about keeping the trees alive but I’m not sure they’ll have enough time to ripen.
Given the dearth of breeding efforts and information on medlar, it certainly seems possible that somebody could develop some earlier/hardier cultivars.
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I’ve had no die back on Breda Giant or Monstreuse at -20 to -18 F for 3 nights in a row back to back. I’m afraid that’s the coldest mine have seen so far, but they have seen that much. I think the highs for those 3 days were around 0.
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Mine have been through-20 without a hiccup. Im not sure ripening is that big an issue. I honestly dont even know when exactly mine are fully developed, but theyre not ready to eat until bletted anyway. Id imagine we have comparable seasons to Madison. Perhaps we have less summer heat and a bit milder winters? Just a guess.
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While on a 7 1/2 mile day hike today I passed some wild serviceberry bushes. Has anyone tried grafting medlar to serviceberry?
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Here I think I have about 1,000 less GDU’s than Madison, and about 300 or so less than you, ( I looked your area up before through Pioneer, because you’re one of the northernmost successful persimmon growers in the east/midwest on the forum.) I actually have Mohler in a pot awaiting spring burial per your expertise. I do believe you are right about us not getting quite as cold minimums as Madison.
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I think it’s really similar – honestly you can even look at the USDA map and see Wisconsin is almost like a bigger Vermont flipped on its axis.
I can’t imagine Medlar needs a ton of heat given its history in the Holland and the UK, and it’s a beautiful tree, so it’s not all bad even if it only ripens every few years.
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no, but itd be worth a go. Aronia might be worth trying to, in a pinch at least. Im all about grafting them to hawthorns since I have them all over at my place. The last thing I need is more trees to plant!
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While hiking I looked closely at the Douglas hawthorns growing along the way, for numbers of root suckers. None, so that idea gets dropped. Now I seek them on line, hoping to avoid the high prices often set for fruiting trees (Raintree demands $100.00 for medlars on pear stock!) Few places I’ve found so far have much or even any pear root stocks Out West. I cannot justify paying the shipping from Cummins in NY to WA again.
The idea that serviceberry might be worth a shot came because I put the cart before the horse in ordering five different medlar scions without rootstock already secure. I still think grafting to hawthorn, especially Douglas, since it is native to my region & has a better tree habit than Columbia, would be the best route to go.
Ive done that on occasion myself. What do mean this cart needs a horse?!?! You might consider pear rootstock in that case. Callery or OH should be easy to come by.
Me for the last five years: I don’t need medlar trees.
Me now after this thread: Ok, but what if…
ETA: thanks for all the great information here!
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winter is for dreaming…
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It is significant that this little orchard looks to be set for keeping me in fruit nearly year 'round & now I look closely at something intriguing and ancient. (Haven’t yet sprung the question, but if all goes well, I know who has room & family members who could be keen to cooperate in growing & using medlar.)
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