Pears in Zone 4 with Fire Blight resistance

[ShiverMinneapolisZ4b]

I’m creating a list of zone 4 fire blight resistant pears. Unfortunately strains of fire blight mutate to overcome in breeding lines.

Question: Wondering if anyone has comments on improving variety of flavor while maintaining disease resistance and 8 weeks of harvest window?

Candidates I identified:

**Pear, organized by bloom times, with fire blight resistance. Subtypes are European (Pyrus communis), Russian (P. ussuriensis), Asian (P. pyrifolia). Most professional “nursery rootstocks” can accept a grafted cultivar of any subtype. Harvest times are guessed based the internet, which is not always right. If you are totally new: the specific qualities of a named pear tree are reproduced by cloning and grafting onto a base growing roots called the rootstock; the rootstock controls size, encourages earlier fruiting (precocity), and offers disease resistance not in the named pear’s natural roots.

Early group 1 bloom:

• Ubileen: Excellent flavor reviews w buttery texture. Short harvest window and short keep time. Zone 5 but survived U of WI Carandale. Somewhat fireblight resistant. Late July / Early Aug.
• Early Gold (ussuriensis): very hardy. Russian. Partially self-fertile and good pollinator other usseriensis. Highly fireblight resistant. Aug 10.
• Summer Crisp: extremely sweet, crisp, Some reviewers say better cooking than fresh eating. Keeps 2-3 months, use w/o bletting, U of MN. Good early pollinator. Interspecific Euro x Russian. Fireblight resistant. Good base tree for multigrafting. “Early season” Aug 10-15 in Excelsior MN.
• Golden Spice (ussuriensis): small, spicy. Keeps to 3 mo refrigerated. American bred Russian variety. Very fireblight resistant. Late Aug.
• Gem: delicious mild pear flavor, long storage. Highly fireblight resistant. A good base tree choice. Aug 30.
• Ure (usseriensis): small, sweet, juicy, Canadian bred, some fireblight resistance.
• Seckel “sugar plum”: extremely sweet, small. Long 5 mo storage. Fireblight resistant.
• Ya Li: Asian pear with some tanginess, pollinated by early European. Fireblight resistant. August.

Mid group 2 bloom:

• Juicy Jewel: A very recent U of Minnesota release; we are waiting for taste reviews and waiting for reviews on where it would grow without disease. An Asian x Ussurian hybrid, child of SummerCrisp x Shinseiki. Stores 2-3 mo. Pollinate via SummerCrisp or Asian Pear. Fireblight resistant, but some growers south of Minnesota are seeing rust in east coast zones 6/7. Aug 13.
• Maxine: General use (canning, eating), buttery not gritty, grows well Minneapolis suburbs, stores well, Fireblight and disease resist. Aug 27.
• Anjou: Too many diseases, much more than SummerCrisp, so skip. “Mid season” Sept.
• Magness: Child of Comice x Seckel, some reviews say excellent flavor. Fruit ripens on tree. Keeps 3-4 mo. Z5 so only branch graft. Some reviewers like. Pollen sterile. Highly fireblight resistant. Mid Sept.
• Moonglow: Unique sweet, tangy, floral taste but not too sweet but some reviewers don’t like flavor. Short harvest season in Sept. Keeps 2-3 mo. Good disease resist. Highly fireblight resistant. Early Sept.
• White Doyenne: highly reviewed, stores 3 mo. Some fireblight resistance. “Mid season” Sept.
• Warren: flavorful, buttery texture, sweet & spicy, many years to produce, keeps 3mo. Only some sellers say zone 4, so branch graft. Pollen sterile. Extremely fireblight resistant. Late harvest = Sept.
• Sierra: new variety, some are trying as fireblight resistant grows on ussurian rootstock. Sep-Oct.

Late group 3 bloom:

• Harrow Delight: intense complex good flavor (diff from Bartlett) and smooth texture. Only keeps 5-7 days. Cross of (Old Home x Early Sweet) x Bartlett, so great base for grafting. Good pollinator. Canadian disease-resistance breeding program product, hence excellent resistance to fireblight + pear trellis rust + pear scab. Excellent base tree choice for grafting. Aug 06.
• Harvest Queen: Rates highly for flavor like Bartlett. Bartlett x (Barseck x Bartlett), so very similar to Bartlett. Fireblight and scab resistant. Aug 13.
• Baby Shipova: An interspecies hybrid of European Pear and Common Whitebeam. Self-fertile and it may not pollinate others due to having an odd number of chromosomes. Early fall.
• Blake’s Pride: Taste more similar to Comice. Bred to be highly fireblight resistant. Zone 5. Aug 30.
• Kieffer: unique flavor, a cross-breed with Chinese, good pollinator. Keeps several weeks. Highly fireblight resistant. Early Sept.
• Harrow Sweet: Sibling of Harrow Delight with excellent flavor but late harvest, large fruit, long keep. Keeps 10 weeks. Highly fireblight resistant. Sept 14.
• Comice: world-renown rich flavor, juicy, keeps months long storage. Zone 4 at OGW, only somewhat fireblight resistant. Early Oct.

Notes:

• Bartlett is the industry standard and used to measure bloom time.
• Flavor varies with sunlight exposure on tree.
• Summer ripeners (thru early Sept) are eaten fresh. In contrast, winter ripeners are cold stored until needed, then brough to room temperature for a few days to finish ripening. The neck on the pear will develop “give” (plasticity to applied pressure) when ripe to eat.
• The rootstocks OHxF 97, OHxF 87, OHxF 333 (semi-dwarf) are hardy to zone 4 and provide compatibility, vigor, resistance to pear decline disease.

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My Small Home Orchard Plan:

For me I plan to multigraft over branches. Summer Crisp (U of MN ussuriensis hybrid on OHxF 97) is what I have for the base tree. Based on the list below, I envision grafting Harrow Delight (early-Aug), Golden Spice (late Aug), Kieffer for Asian crossbreed (Early Sept), Magness or Warren or maybe White Doyenne (mid-late Sept), maybe Comice (Oct). If I have room, maybe Gem (late Aug). I’m a newbie.

I will update my post for future readers.

Cross References:

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[SoMtHomestead]

Not zone 4 here, but the harrow varieties have been highly susceptible to fireblight for me. I dont get any harrow fruit and shoot blight races towards the roots. Moonglow, kieffer, and ayers do way better.

[MF25]

Olympic pear is also fireblight resistant, per cummins nursery

MF

[ShiverMinneapolisZ4b]

Cross reference to another list of fireblight resistant pears:

The really fireblight resistant pears are a short list

[fb] this slide is from 2013 I think and is not complete and there are more Magness is pollen sterile [FB1] [fb2] Kieffer, Beurre Hardy, Bell (new pear), Ambrosia, Ayers, Mericourt, Green Jade (from Purdue) also have FB resistance and can pollinate

[Bogovich]

Have you experienced fireblight with harrow sweet or crisp?

[SoMtHomestead]

Yes. Both. Sweet is more precocious so it has experienced more blight. I have to prune out strikes aggressively or the whole tree will die. Im slowly converting it over to potomac.

[davidz4b]

Here, I imagine coupled with the early unusual spring freeze / frost pattern we saw this year I saw the following leaf early and get what appears to be the one-two punch of freeze damage and or fireblight effectively insta killing them to the rootstocks:

Dripping Honey

Raja

Shinseki

Harrow Delight

Honeysweet

One baby shipova

Shinko is also highly impacted but appears to be attempting to survive, looks grim though

Interestingly the two Shipova seem unaffected likely due to their late leaf out period. Same for one of the baby shipova as well

Summercrisp no impact this spring, worth noting it does appear to get rare strikes in the fall but it doesn’t spread more than 1-2”. Leaf out date similar to full Asians.

Coldsnap appears unimpacted, though first year in the ground but leaves came out at the same time.

Seckel, same as coldsnap, had no impact but leafs were ~ one month later

Juicy Jewel is impressively vigorous and seemingly unimpacted. Leaves open a full two weeks before the full Asians, zero hard freeze damage, 8” of growth before last frost.

Tennosui appears to be similar to Summercrisp in terms of vigor and damage. No strikes or damage