Here is what most of the bloom looks like now on the Asian Pear.I sprayed once with the Fertilome Fire Blight Spray and Sulfur.
Do these flowers look bad.Could it be Fire Blight?It’s a little early to tell about getting fruit,but there is one KG that has grown.bb
The yellow stems are a bad sign
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I agree yellow is not what we like to see.
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We have a few Shinseiki Asian Pear fruitlets this year.
According to Gurneys "Reliable producer of delightfully sweet, juicy, yellow fruits that have a firm, crisp flesh. Ripening in mid-August, the uniform fruits are excellent for fresh eating, desserts and salads. The vigorous, heavy yielding trees exhibit excellent resistance to fire blight. Suggested pollinators include: Chojuro, Drippin’ Honey, Olympic Giant, Shinko and 20th Century. Zones 5-9. "
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I like Shinseiki more than 20th century. It is bigger and sweeter than 20th century.
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This is a DOWN year of pome. My KG has the fewest flower clusters in the past 9 years. A few Shinseiki, Hosui and Kosui. No Drippin’s Honey this year!!!
E pears, my grafts of Duchess, Ayer, Fondante, Magness and Harrow Delight have blooms this year. My Harrow Sweet tree is loaded.
They have just started to bloom and we have had days after days of rain. Bad timing for cross pollination. That will result in even lower yield this year.
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Sooner or later we all get an off year no matter how good of a grower you are. Harrow sweet is a good pear for you to grow because it always misses those late freezes. Very smart on your part ! Cant wait to see Duchess D’ Angoulme fruit for you! Its a good pear to grow but its a very late pear.
It is so easy to under thin fruit trees. I tried hard to thin pears, peaches and apples well but obviously not enough.
This year I will remove a lot of blooms from my Harrow Sweet before they set fruit. I did that last year, that’s why it is loaded again this year. I did not do a good job with apples, Korean Giant and 20th Century last year.
I’ve heard that Duchess is not as tasty as Duchess Brozee, right?
I will ask you when to pick Duchess and Ayer later this year.
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@mamuang Duchess will likely ripen for you in November unless you have a hot summer. Bronze should be close to the same quality more or less. Bronze as you know is a sport that is reportedly just a shade better and smaller. Duchess is not a bad pear there is just not anything remarkable to me about it similar to a good grocery store bartlett but somewhat better. Ayers is much earlier and i will post when we pick them. Your season is typically just a little later than ours so it should be easy to catch the correct ripening times on your new pears. Ive got a few new ones this year myself and i will be interested to learn more about them.
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What would you guys say is a good range of pears to o let set on a five year old tree. My rough estimate is that my Hosui and starking have 200 set pears each. Thin to every 8 inches?
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For pears, I use percentage, not space. Established trees, I thin 70-80% off. I’d thin 80% or more.
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On my pear tree, I only have two clusters of fruit for the entire tree. This is the third year tree is in my yard. Each cluster has about 8 fruits. If I keep about 10 fruit for the tree, I’m guessing it should be able to support them. But since the are all on one branch do you think I should thin even more?
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10 or fewer, depending on how strong the branch. Maybe, keeping 10 for now and see if there will be pest damage a few weeks from now. Otherwise, if it were me, I’d keep them under 10. That’s just me. You will have more next year.
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Thinning pears is not something i typically do because i grow mostly full sized trees. Many pears require small amounts of fertilizer and sprays and others require so sprays or fertilizer.
Pears are about the most environment friendly tree we can grow. Some pears such as harrow sweet are given to over produce by their nature so do keep a close watch on that tree. Trees such as Warren seem to have a pollination issue and are likely going to under produce. More research is needed on all the pear varities. Unfortunately until recent years not a lot of pears were grown. Apples were king during that time. Now more people are growing pears so more information is being developed every day. Forums like this are partially responsible for the incredible wave of new interest in growing pears.i do agree if someone lives in a place were all fruitlets are not naturally thinned manual thinning may be needed. Asian pears are another that produce to heavy at times which if not addressed cause the tree to go biennial.
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Clark,
Imagine how large the size of your pear (fruit) could be have you had time (and energy) to thin your full size pear trees? Your Duchess could weigh a kilo 
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Yes there is a point at which a decision is made to grow one 2 pound pear or three 1 pound pears. i agree with you on that relationship but my goal is to grow the 3 and not the 1. If i sell them the 3 have more value. Duchess pear weights in Kansas are determined by moisture more so than thinning. It will break every branch on the tree off if it rains enough with a surplus of 2 pound pears. In those cases i thin pears if propping up branches is not enough. Seckle can need thinned due to the large numbers of fruitlets that tend to be small as shown below.
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We have more rain last year and so far, this year. I’ll see how big my Duchess can be. It is two 4 ft branches of Blake’s Pride.
I will seriously thin them so the branches won’t break. It is not just to size up the fruit. In fact, sizing up the fruit is not my priority. Preventing branches from breaking is.
Losing two large branches of peaches two years in a row despite serious thinning was no fun.
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I agree with you that the tree is the priority. It sounds like the difference between your method and mine is that you have a much wetter location. Duchess will get huge under those circumstances so be prepared. If it gets to 2 pounds here at times imagine what it will do there! Here is a description from https://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark-item/duchesse-d-angouleme-pear
"The original tree was a wilding (a tree that grows by seed from a discarded core) grown in a garden near Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France. About 1808, M. Audusson, a nurseryman at Angers, got permission to propagate the pear, then calling it the Poire des Eparonnais. In 1820, he sent a basket of the fruit to the Duchesse d’Angouleme asking permission to name the pear in her honor. Permission was granted.
Between 1880 and 1907 this tree was imported in America by Felix Gillet, a young Frenchman who realized that miners arriving in California in the wake of the Gold Rush would need fruit and nut trees to feed themselves. Gillet opened his nursery in 1871, in Nevada City, California, the epicenter of the Gold Rush, and began selling his favorite varieties. Felix Gillet propagated in California some of the best fruit and nut trees and established the foundations for the major agricultural industries of the Pacific Western states. In his 1880 Catalogue, Felix Gillet described this pear as “Very large and very juicy; productive and regular bearer.”
Even though it is uncertain if this pear was ever in commercial production, it was certainly planted from homesteads of the Sierra during the Gold Rush era . The fruit investigators of the Felix Gillet Institute have found only one Duchesse d’Angouleme tree growing wild on an old homestead in Sierra County, CA. With many decades of non-human intervention -without irrigation, fertilization, pruning or pest control- it still yearly bears a large crop!
This abundantly productive heirloom tree produces large pears that are of very good unique flavor. Its shape varies with irregular and uneven surfaces, bumpy even. It ripens to a warm yellow, thin skin netted with russet. When mature, it has firm white flesh that turns buttery and melting, with richly sweet flavor.
As of 2014 it is found for sale on-line from a couple of heirloom nurseries. Yet, the Felix Gillet Institute researchers hold doubts on whether the Duchesse d’Angouleme has been confused with the Duchesse Bronzee, which is being sold as the Duchess d’Angouleme. So who is to say, how many are actually out there…"
The pear your growing is the true Duchess D’ Angoulme so yours will fit the description. I think you will love it but you grow many unique and delicious pears such as harrow sweet, magness, korean giant etc. and at its best it will never reach that quality. When we grow the best pears already we become hard to impress. What was said above is true it is "Very large and very juicy; productive and regular bearer.”
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