What temperature is the refrigerator set on?
I think they are freezing.
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This seems like a good place to ask about pear precocity…
If you’ve got Gem, Harrow Sweet, Blake’s Pride, Beurre Giffard, Shenandoah, Sunrise, Lucious and/or Turnbull…how long did they take to start bearing from grafting to a new rootstock? Are any of them super fast to fruit? Or take most of a decade like Warren/Magness are reputed to?
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Harrow sweet is fast to fruit and will probably be your first. I’m not sure about the others.
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Harrow Sweet is the most precocious variety I have ever grown. It actually set a fruit on a graft this year! Since it will tend to fruit too early, the fruit should be removed from very young trees.
I grow the first five varieties on your list. Gem is the only one that took more than 3 or 4 years to bear, and I think it was because I didn’t feed it well enough.
And, rootstock makes a difference. Calleryana and European pear seedling would normally take longer to bear fruit.
All that said, Warren and Magness have never taken more than 5 or 6 years to fruit here. My Jana’s Pear (probably Warren) took 7 years on calleryana.
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Harrow Sweet produced the next season for me after grafting on a mature seedling tree. Blake’s Pride took about 5 years and wasn’t worth the wait. Sunrise took a decade to produce and has not been a consistent bearer since.
The only other fast bearer that I’ve encountered is Easter Beurre, which is not on your list.
I bought a McLaughlin pear tree from Fedco about 5 years ago and it produced this year for the first time, I got about 30 small to medium pears. There is next to nothing on the internet about this variety, other than a reference from a 100 year old book. I bought it just based on Fedco’s description. After eating about 10, I can say that this is by far the most interesting pear I have eaten.
Fedco described it, as I recall, as producing medium size pears that you pick in October while they are still hard as a rock. That was completely accurate, after 2 months in the fridge they are still rock-like and none have gone bad. It has not been picky about when you pick them, we had a very late fall and I left a few on until Thanksgiving, they don’t seem to drop. There were several frosts during that period, so I put them directly on the counter, they ripened just like those in the fridge.
These pears have an intense citrus flavor mixed with a maraschino cherry type flavor to my taste. My wife wasn’t sure about the maraschino part, but agreed it is an intense and enjoyable experience overall. It has some mild astringency that balances the flavors and is not unpleasant. This is not a refined pear, the peeling is thick and inedible, the flesh coarse, and there are some grit cells near the core.
I haven’t seen this pear in Fedco’s catalog since I bought it, it must not have been a good seller. The tree is very spurry, it has fruit growing all along the branches, which I like, as I can keep the tree smaller and still get fruit. With all the spurs, the potential scions are short and skinny. If anyone is interested, however, I might have a few for 2027 I could send out.
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Here’s a great read The lost pears of Maine
"The McLaughlin pear was “rich, sugary, slightly perfumed, and excellent”
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That Rousselet cross is beautiful. You mentioned that it was included last year, do you have a link to its characteristics?
Shawn,
This is a link to Joseph Postman’s Curator’s Choices. Joseph was the pear curator at the Corvallis Repository for many years. He retired a few years ago. Read about Hybrid VII, which has been named Vavilov. I grow both but the original Vavilov tree got taken out during our last fire blight epidemic in 2022. For me, Hybrid V is just as beautiful.
Here is a link to images on GRIN for Vavilov - Hybrid V
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/ImgDisplay?id=1251455
Here are images of Hybrid VII that I sent to the repository, but it looks like they uploaded two copies. The last several images are of Vavilov. I need to ask them to move those over to the Vavilov site.
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/ImgDisplay?id=1251454
Here is a link to observation data for Hybrid VII. Ripens late August, early September.
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1251454
It is a good one for me. Ripens very well without refrigeration. I eat them directly off the tree.
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too bad you have to pay to read something. it really peaked my interest but not paying to read a article.
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id be interested in trying it. i have several pear grafts from fedco on my mtn. ash. despite being covered in blooms, no pears set this year. theres 4 cultivars on it as well. stacyville, patten, bartlett and nova. i also have a ivans belle hybrid mtn. ash i grafted over to seirra and pineapple pear. i have several more branches left to graft over on it.