They are very similar. My Twentieth Century (Nijisseiki) ripens a little later than New Century (Shinseiki) and is smaller and not nearly as good tasting to me. I’ll try to post pictures of both side by side.
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That matches my experience from 2 decades ago county wide. Shinseiki though – that was very good in El Cajon, Santee, Ramona, Rancho Bernardo, Escondido, Valley Center.
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They were tasty to me, I went from zero to 6.
I had both 20th Century and Shinseiki side by side for a few years.
My experience is the same as @mayhaw999. Shinseiki is a bit larger and tastier.
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My Shinseiki last year. I had two grafts. Both got fire blight after 3 years so I am not grating it again.
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Last year was a bad fire blight year. Shinseiki had a lot of strikes but I kept cutting it out and most of the grafted limb survived to have a nice fruit set this year. The previous bad blight year was 2015. On the same large multigrafted tree, Shinseiki did not have any fireblight while Korean Giant had a major strike and Ya Li was destroyed. Unbelievably, Hosui had no significant problems either year. I’m grateful to still have this variety. It’s a very refreshing fruit to munch on while in the orchard.
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Oh no, I’m nervous of Ya Li now. Maybe I better cut all the Yali grafts out.
It looks more like my Chojuro.
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I was trying to decide between Hosui, Shinko and Chojuro.
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When i eat chojuro i taste butterscotch like flavor. Hosui has very sand paper like skin which is normally ripe several weeks ago in my area.
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The pear has smooth skin. It tastes very smooth, juicy and sweet. But it is not the same fine taste of Chinese YaLi. It sure has thinner skin than the large green Asian pears. Not sure if this is the kind of butterscotch you talking about.
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These two pears are from the same tree, one gets more sun, one gets less sun. But one looks like housui with rough skin, one looks more like Chojuro with smooth skin.
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I used my penetrometer and super fin was 12-14 psi. Picked and also picked my abbe fettel, nye russet bartlet pear. Trees planted 2018. Think I need an another fridge or walk in cooler I’m already way over stuffed now. What’s it going to be like in a few more years? I picked 120lbs of Bosc a few days ago!
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How well has that worked for you? I was looking at them the other day thinking about trying it.
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My grandfather used it for his orchard to good effect and when I sold Bartlett to the cannery that’s what they used to find the picking day for them. So for me it works I use it for apples as well. When I picked those superfin I had none on ground but they came off with the tilt test for 90percent of them. First year for these three pear trees for me. I’ll be picking my harrow sweet this weekend as well.
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I’m guessing you start with the published pressures. Then experiment till you find your personal preference. There are about 5 different methods of testing. I wanted the one the big orchards use and you just answered that. Thanks.
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Would you mind showing a puc of the penetrometer?
I have never heard of it but it looks like a useful tool for picking pears at the right time.
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I haven’t used a penetrometer in the past but one of my good fruit-growing friends persuaded me to try using it to gather some data on some of the pear varieties that have no published picking pressures. So it arrived yesterday and now I need to learn how to use it!
Welcome to the club of pear growers who now have run out of refrigeration space. Did you do pressure testing to decide when to pick your Bosc? It seems early to me. Today I picked all Potomac and the few Abbe Fetel that set on the tree this year and about half of the Conference. The first Magness and Warren are falling so I’ll watch them closely.
Photos coming later.
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Here are photos of the pears I picked on 9/9/2023.
Potomac
It originated from a cross of ‘Moonglow’ x ‘Beurre d’ Anjou’, released in 1993. It is fire blight-resistant and ripens about 14 days after Bartlett. From the description when released, “Symmetry is regular, with occasional slight bumpiness”. As you can see, that is an understatement. This year the fruit on both of my trees is very bumpy. The fruit may be ripened after harvest without postharvest chilling and will store for about 2 months.
Here is the narrative from Grin: https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1482792
Conference
Introduced in 1894. The shape is long pyriform, skin smooth, green, unevenly russeted. It can have misshapen parthenocarpic fruit. Ripens October and November after refrigerated storage. I can attest to the fact that it is susceptible to fire blight. I have lost two small trees to fireblight but a graft on my large multigrafted tree has not had a strike in 12 years. One of the most important cultivars in the UK and on the continent.
Abbe Fetel (Abate Fetel)
The number one pear in Italy. Developed in France in 1866. It is susceptible to fire blight I (I lost a tree in 2015) and will set parthenocarpic fruit when no pollen is available.
Beurre Hardy
Introduced in the 1840s and formerly grown in Santa Clara County, CA for export to the UK. Now is sometimes sold as French Butter Pear. Excellent quality and competes with Warren at the Farmer’s Market here as grown by one of our Redwood Empire CRFG members.
Next week I will start picking Warren and Jana’s Pear (probably Warren), maybe Paragon and a couple of others. Stay tuned.
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