John @ Maple Valley responded to my inquiry:
Hi Andrew,
These are varieties that Tony harvested from an old homestead somewhere around Gillette or Suring, WI. Here’s what I know of those varieties:
German A: Unnamed seedling. A very large pear which grows up to one pound. Very good for eating and sauce. Not for canning.
Germain C: Bosc type pear. One of the few pears that is good tree ripened.
So not much info, just a bit more than what they posted previously on their site when selling the scion. I have the German A, but not the German C they sell.
I don’t mean to hi-jack this thread, but that is a super interesting comment to me. I am making crosses with pears, but also follow your recommendations and know how about tomatoes closely. I know that in tomatoes most of the desirable eating qualities, like size, color, flavor, sweetness etc are mostly recessive and thus show up only in the second or third generation after the cross. I also know that most resistances in tomatoes are dominant, I guess because these genes are easier to identify when crossing and selecting among populations. Could you explain your stemmer and/ or the mechanism behind identifying recessive resistances, or a link to the article and the way of thinking behind this? Only if you have the time and it is easy to do so, don’t feel obliged, this is just very interesting to me as a breeder and I am trying to understand the logic behind it.
A book written in the 1940’s, Jugenheimer - Corn: Improvement, Seed Production, and uses covers most of the relevant “100 years ago” understanding of corn breeding. It is surprisingly up to date in terms of what was viable then but obviously does not cover GMO or several modern breeding methods. I purchased a library copy about 15 years ago.
You can also find a relatively recent document on breeding maize for disease tolerance in Africa where recessives were stacked to give a highly disease resistant maize.
Hello pear experts:
I volunteer at the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, CO. We have an heirloom fruit orchard. It is approximately 10 years old. To date, there have been no pears planted. However, we have lost a few apples and cherries, opening up space for a few new trees. I suggested some pears and have been asked to research varieties.
It is Zone 5b, 5000’ elevation and there is some fireblight pressure, but not too bad (yet?). Avg last frost is May 4.
What older “heirloom” FB resistant pears would you recommend?
I think Seckel checks all the boxes. Maybe Ayer’s?
We’d probably start with only 4-5 trees, so we’d want to manage bloom time for pollination.
Rootstock recommendations also welcome, with some bias toward semi-dwarf.
Thank you in advance for sharing your expertise and opinions!
Paul
For your area, most pears could work. Bell, Blake’s Pride, Duchess D’Angouleme (1800), Potomac, Seckel (late 1700’s), Shenandoah, Tyson (1794), and Warren would be suggestions to look at. Some of these are fresh eating and a couple are storage.
@Toadham Beierschmidt sometimes spelled as Beierschmitt. A newer pear than the others fusion_power mentioned. It’s from here in Iowa circa early 1900’s. It’s got very good cold hardiness if that’s a concern for you. Supposedly decent fireblight resistance but we don’t have heavy FB pressure here so hard to say for sure.
Also I’d just like to say I have a lot of respect for the work you do there. After growing fruit trees for many years I finally decided to try my hand at grafting a few years ago after watching a video you guys released with Scott Skogerboe talking about his quest to save old varieties. Much respect!
Could be ayers or tenn. Any leaves or a photo of the tree? That red on one side is typical with ayers. The timing isn’t perfect but possible since they are slightly warmer. See if it has some grit in the skin and an occasional off taste. Is it dripping and melting like ayers is?
There was about 20 sum guesses on the post. If SC is anything like my year here it has been warmer…which has made all of my timing off. The poster said its his neighbors tree and one side is always red… other than that its hard to narrow anything down by taste.
I think Ayers is a good candidate… as they are similar to this posters pic…(and timing of this 3 year old post is almost to the day).
If i was forced to bet money it would be on ayers. After enough experience we just know a pear when we see it. That is not to say i know every pear. Many pears out there people ask us about we made widely available to everyone. Pears like douglas i requested scion from usda grin. I grow it here in Kansas and when it did well i recommended it to the @39thparallel nursery who lives in douglas county Kansas just a few miles where the pear originally grew. Naturally my pears need pruned and why not give scion wood to Mike. Mike works hard getting rare types to the public. Now everyone can grow an ayers, douglas, lazy j, duchess d’ angoulme, clara frijs. Among our circles a harrow delight or clarks small yellow is as common as a bartlett. We all love pears and all contribute to our love of pears. Seeing an ayers is like some people feel when they see a grown child. It is a picture of one of our own out there. Dr. Natelson in Texas preserved many of those southern pears and sent them to the USDA. We requested them from the usda. Im trying to find the best pears for Kansas orchards. I have kissed a lot of pears or maybe i should say frogs to find pears like ayers. Ayers was in no danger of dissappearing without us. Pears like leona and charles harris absolutely are in danger and someone like me needed to grow them in zone 6 to prove it could be done. The pears are starting to be more widely known. Tenn on the other hand is the sibling of ayers. Not many know much about it. I like it but the flavor is more likely to be off than even.ayers. when these pears are great they are really good. When they are bad they are real bad. It depends on weather , soil and other factors. @Fusion_power is starting to grow a few of these out now. I have grown hundreds and hundreds of pears through the years. I dont think i have tried a thousand types but higher hundreds is possible. Im fortunate i have hundreds of trees now. I can quickly change a few over and try something new. @39thparallel and i sometimes get together and swap a hundred scions of different types in our own private scion exchange. When we leave we both have to many new types to know what to do with them. We are working on growing rare types of pears now no one has even heard of like estella. We will do our best to get that one out there soon. Everyone forgot what it was , who grew it , where it came from etc. .We will be very fortunate if we can rescue that pear before it went extint like other sibling pears did from that collection.
Paul, as to semi-dwarf rootstocks… a lot of folks have good success with OHxF87 here on the front range. I hear OHxF 333 (A bit smaller) can also work well.
Regarding your reply to my summer inquiry on heirloom pear varieties… Any chance you will have Beirschmitt scion wood next spring? I have not been able to locate from any commercial source. Thanks!
PS This would be for my use, not HPEC, as the director is not yet sure about bringing in pears to their heirloom orchard.
Yes I will have 1 scion. It’s on the thinner side, maybe 1/4 inch, but it’s yours if you want it. I’ll probably do my pruning in February so I can shoot you a direct message then and get your shipping info.
