Rob, I think your hunch of mislabeling is correct. I have planted many Harrow Sweets at many sites and not seen a speck of scab on a single one- and I don’t spray pears for scab. Seckel and especially Bosc are my magnets for scab. Seems Anjou is in that category but I don’t grow it.
I wish the Harrow station would work on breeding a disease resistant Bosc. There is one crisp-sweet pear with aromatics and no rivals or substitutes.
One thing about Harrow Sweet is, even if you don’t thin, the fruit still gets sweet, much like Seckel.
Yes, I think that must be the case, unless I am completely mis diagnosing the scab…but it seems pretty textbook. Badly cracking fruit, small lesions on new growth, etc.
I’ll try again with a new source this spring (if I can find a stick this late)or next.
Seems I ought to look into the cold hardiness of harvest queen as well.
I can send you Magness scion wood next year. Mine is in it’s 4th year
and will be producing it’s first crop. I also grafted it onto an Ayers last year, and the grafts took off like gang busters. They should produce next year.
My Magness on quince is growing like its on seedling rootstock. That pear makes triploid apples seem like virus-infected wimps by comparison. Harrow Delight is right next to it and is about a third the size in spite of being planted at the same time from the same supplier etc.
I’m glad others are liking that pear, I have been talking it up for years but I never heard anyone else’s opinions of it.
Fluffy, thanks for the thoughts on Crisp. It sounds like I probably made the right choice. Grown as an arch there won’t be as much fruiting wood anyway, so I’m sure I’ll won’t be overwhelmed by HS pears even with the 2 trees.
I agree- I’m hoping to find one from the ARS collection. Here are the two which I’m grafting this year whose descriptions compared them to Bosc.
Doyenne Gris- “Sweet, spicy flavor, equal to Bosc in dessert quality.” It lists “No damage” for scab and rust, and says it is “Moderately susceptible to fire blight.” (which is better than Bosc)
Elliot (CPYR 2624)- “50% russeted. Buttery texture; flavor similar to Bosc; soluble solids to 18%. Ripens 2 to 4 weeks after Bartlett; stores 16 weeks at 0 C. Tree: upright habit; no fire blight during 20 years of observation, apparently resistant.”
I got my first 8-10 pears from the tree (3rd year on quince) last fall, most during the last 2 weeks of September. I let them sit on the counter for about a week and they were large, sweet and juicy, with 16-18 brix. One I knocked off accidentally in the first week of Sept was ok, but not that good with 12-14 brix.
Here’s a pic of one from 9/26, next to some So Jujubes and hardy kiwi.
Thanks- I’ll give this a try. I think I roughly have the timing down, as it seems to be ripe in late August. I guess I should pick it a week or so earlier, then keep it in the fridge for a while. I’ve already tried keeping it on the counter for a bit and that let’s it get softer and juicier, but doesn’t remove the astringency.
If anyone wants some, I have Magness scionwood in the fridge. When I pruned it back I felt bad about tossing it, so I saved some (I know- I’m a packrat). The tree is as vigorous for me as it is for Scott, so there was plenty to prune.
Actually Harrow Sweet is a very spurry plant, so you will likely get more fruiting spurs than you would think. You will likely want to slow down the development some by fairly hard summer pruning to force uniform development of spurs. Just be sure to alternate the side the terminal bud you leave is on, in order to make a smoother arch.
IMO, too many people try to complete the wooden structure too soon and end up with the fruiting spurs clustered instead of uniformly distributed when they create restricted forms…
Sounds like good advice. I’m very happy to keep them as two separate trees for a while and keep hacking them back to make sure I get the spurs well positioned. As long as I start getting some pears along the way, the perfection of the arch can take all the time it needs.
A good early non-Harrow pear here is Aurora. Very pretty golden russet pear that gets good size and sugar for a summer pear. Never had any FB or scab issues with it.
One that Cornell used to rave about but totally sucks for me is Highland. Just about the least healthy pear I’ve ever tried to grow and the only one that has cracking issues.
I know this is a little off-topic but since there are pear grafters on this thread–I have Winter Nelis scion wood from my own tree in the fridge if anyone wants some. Delicious dessert pear.
Lizzie, did it take a long time to get fruit from your Winter Nelis? Mine was planted 12 years ago and has its first flowers this year. It has this really spindly/twisted growth on the shoots, and it makes a ton of them. My tree is in an area with too little sun and I wonder if that is the main problem with it.
Holy cow…12 years? Scott what is your experience with pears from time of bare root planting to fruiting in terms of years? Obviously varieties differ, some greatly, but as an average? I’m always hearing 5 years here and that seems awfully long to me.
What would you guess the time to fruit to be for a Bartlett for example? Assume average conditions with no unusual circumstances. Also, when a pear first fruits is it recommended to remove those fruits as one would with a 2nd year apple or is the more delayed fruiting of pears sufficient to provide the size and delivery system necessary to carry the fruit load?
BTW, I addressed this question to Scott but as always, am interested in anyone’s experience or reply.
All of my pears fully fruited within 4 years, without removing the first fruits, and Pineapple
fully fruited in 3 years. I don’t have Scott’s patience. I would have gotten rid of that tree a very
long time ago.
Appleseed, I put in another pear planting in 2012 with good sun and all but one in that planting (Magness) are blooming this year. So, I think it is largely related to the too little sun and too high density in the original planting. Plus me not knowing how to prune it properly given the low light / high density. On the plus side the old planting taught me a lot about pruning and training, I had to work really hard to get things to fruit. Even though the new planting has pears spaced at only 3’, I knew how to properly train them for early fruiting.
Anyway the point was not that but if the spindly growth was an inherent property of the variety or not. It has very unusual limb growth. I decided to Google it and it seems to have a reputation for that…
Plus I found a post of Lucky mentioning it had a “trashy” growth habit in a GW post.
