The ayers looks somewhat similar to seckle pears I grow. Seckles are sometimes called sugar pears for a very good reason. Are ayers similar in that respect? In my limited experience rating pears these past few years, I’ve found that the smaller pears I’ve tasted typically have increased sweetness and more nuanced flavor profile. They compensate for their small size.
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They look blemish free…
Nice pear
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@mayhaw9999
I went to check my “Potomac”. They are not bumpy. I hope mine is true to label. Not ripen yet.
@clarkinks glad you get some Abate Fetel. I think mine will be 2 more week. We have had more cloud than sun this past few days and the trend will continue.
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Are the Potomac amongst the last pears to ripen in your area? I think I may have harvested some of my pears too early. While they ripened just fine after storing them in the larder, I feel like they could still be hanging out on the tree waiting until more storage space opened up.
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I think that small pears that are popular are great in other respects because they were selected in spite of their small size. In other words, they were so good that they had to be propagated, even though they are smaller than people want.
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How tall are your trees, Clark? They look like they tower over the average person.
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That seems like a reasonable explanation. I love reading the origin stories. Most are likely apocryphal, but still interesting regardless.
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Around 20- 35 feet. Potomac are just now dead ripe. We have been under a hazy sky of fine ash this year causing late ripening times.
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I thought I replied to you but it may have gone to someone else. That was a great article. Thanks.
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I think that is Hoskins. Carrick is more tapered and has a very distinct basin/calyx end. Wow! you have a lot of pears.
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Think you are right on hoskins and carrick! Yes i’m trying to cut back on varities. Grafted over many types this year but still feel i may have more than i should. Think you might grow more than me or as many i’m not sure. Have some very rare pears out there.
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Beautiful Seckels. I don’t think mine are ready to pick but I’m watching them closely. Ayers is a hybrid with Chinese Sand pear genes.
Ayers (PI 541722). -Originated in Knoxville, Tennessee, by Brooks D. Drain, Tennessee Agriculture Experiment Station. Introduced in 1954. Garber x Anjou; tested as Tennessee 37S21. Fruit: skin golden russet with a rose tint flesh juicy, sweet; good for eating fresh and average for canning; first picking in mid-August. Tree: resistant to fire blight,
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I do have a lot of varieties but many are just one limb on a multigrafted tree. Also, many of my trees are on OHxF87 or 333 and are small. I wish they were all on calleryana. As I have mentioned. many of the 87 and 333 trees have tiny fruit this year while the calleryana trees have normal to huge fruit. I only have three trees on Pyrus communis rootstock - Comice, Magness and Abbe Fetel. and Abbe is a rootsprout regraft after Dana Hovey died of fire blight in 2014.
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@clarkinks i hope you haven’t got rid of your st. nichols pear I’m hoping to get a stick or two from someone this winter.
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Chinese sand pear? So am I correct in assuming ayers is a hybrid of an Asian and European pear?
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I just picked the last of my Chojuro. They were sweet (15-16 brix), but I waited a bit too long, as they were starting to lose texture.
That is nice, but I’m just as impressed by the good job he did thinning them. It’s a good year if I get baseball sized pears, let alone softball sized one. And too often I get golf ball sized Asian pears…
I’ve been picking Harrow Sweet for a week or two and got most the rest today. This picking was about 20lbs, with 15lbs being without significant damage and going into the fridge. I’m glad to see 10 weeks at 10C, as that means I should be able to eat them for quite a while from the fridge.
They are pretty good, one of the better (and more productive) pears I grow. The one from the counter (picked several days ago) was 17 brix, while the ones fresh from the tree were about 15 brix.
It was a long climb up the tree for this guy. This pear was at least 10’ up the tree.
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Your HS are large and beautiful.
My HS tree this year has gotten shaded even more by the tree in front of it. It also gets severe sooty blotch and fly specks. The pears have stunted. They are about 1” in size. Many dropped early.
I think being in shade is the biggest issue.
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Beautiful HS, Jim! Mine had a scab problem this spring that I was only able to partially fix. A lot of the fruit are scabby.
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I had a few Harrow Sweet drop early, but most of them hung on pretty well. As you can see in the pic, the leaves are a bit rough now, but it is doing much better than the multi-graft pear next to it which lost most of it’s leaves several weeks ago. I have a few big HS, but there are a lot of small ones. Like with most of my fruit, I need to do more thinning. And maybe a bit of pruning as well.
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