So, after a zillion year wait, I had my first crop off of my shipova tree this year. I was underwhelmed. The crop was huge, at least relative to the handful of fruits I got the two previous years (but the birds ate). Conservatively, there were 125 fruits on a three tier espalier (realized shipova are primarily tip-bearing after five or six years of training, derp!). The fruit was insipid and barely sweet. A real loser. Texturally, even the best of them didn’t come close to any of my pears. They were firm-soft, not itself a negative, but they were also on the dry side.
The overall experience was so disappointing that I’m considering removing the tree despite the fact that it’s a damned handsome espalier, and starting over with a pear tree, since I’m pretty sure you can’t use a shipova as pear stock. (Somebody set me straight on that if I’m wrong.) The only thing that has me waffling at this point is that the tree experienced about a 60% defoliation in mid-July, likely due to water stress. It stabilized once I got the water issue handled, though no new leaves sprouted. I did not thin the fruit at this point (probably should have) so it carried the entire crop to maturity. Perhaps the reduced canopy affected the tree’s ability to properly sugar up the fruit. My Cornish Gilliflower apple experienced a similar defoliation event with a relatively large crop, yet the fruit is excellent. Perhaps that’s due to it ripening two months later than the shipova in mid-October, so it had more time to add sugar. Still, CG carried a similar crop and ripened in its season.
The bottom line is that unless a few of you chime in and tell me your shipova are close to a match to your pears, it’s gone. I ripened Bartlett, Warren, Comice and Seckel this year, and compared to the worst piece of fruit I’ve had from any of those trees so far, the best shipova was like eating a damp piece of slightly sweetened cardboard vs a juicy, velvety…well, the analogy breaks down for me here, but I think you readers will get the picture.
Hey Neil. I’m extremely disappointed to hear your low opinion of Shipova. Just this week I was thinking about new and unusual fruits I might try and came across Shipova- which I knew nothing about. But most of what I read made them sound great, so its helpful to hear they may not all be rainbows and candy! ha. Anyway, here is one of the articles I read and I thought you might enjoy it as well, even though you had very different results. Also, how old is your tree (or least a better estimate than your aforementioned “zillion years” ha)
Hey, thecityman, sorry to throw ice water on your hot shipova romance. I bought my shipova in spring 2008 as a one year whip from, I believe, Burnt Ridge and threw it in the ground immediately. They do have a reputation as slow bearers, so I don’t think my seven-year wait for the first stolen fruit is out of line, but remember it was nine years for a truly large crop. That’s a long wait for something that may not be all it’s cracked up to be from reports.
I can’t imagine my defoliation problem was helpful, so I’ll probably give it another year of fruiting since I waited so darned long to taste it in the first place. It’s also possible that even though it’s a fairly mature tree, it may take a year or five of real fruiting for it to settle down and deliver its best-quality fruit. Plus, as I noted in my previous post and even though it’s primarily a tip bearer, it’s a fine looking tree, so eliminating it would hurt…but that’s not your concern. Hopefully others with longer experience than I will chime in.
Oh no…I’d definitely rather find out now than after 7-10 years of caring for one! And I wasn’t ALL that fired up anyway, so no big deal. And btw… I must confess I was sort of amused at your wondering if maybe the fruit will improve after after a few years. I say that because I know I’ve read stories here of people who said they had some kind of fruit tree and the fruit wasn’t great the first year but it improved over time, and as a result of those stories, every single fruit that I taste for the first time in my orchard that isn’t that great, I tell myself it’s going to get better with time- just like you are hoping. Problem is, for me at least, none of my first disappointments have improved much over time! haha. Oh well, my orchard is still very, very young so there is still hope!
@clarkinks makes an interesting point. Even if you eventually decide the Shipova is not worth its space in your yard, you could topwork it with one of the OHxF scions as an “interstem,” and then subsequently topwork that with tasty euro pear varieties of your choosing. The power in the roots would provide you with a kick-ass pear tree in no time.
I have no experience with Shipova, but as a fellow espalier enthusiast I’d love to see a picture of your tree!
If I were you I’d give it another couple years; seems like many things don’t make the best fruit the first year or two. But I can certainly understand the desire to get on with it if you are going to end up taking it out.
Give it another try. Many things take a few years to come into their own. You’ve waited this long already that it would be a shame not to take another few years to give it a chance.
You’re likely to regret pulling it out prematurely far more than you’ll regret giving it a few more years to shine.
I mean, I understand. I’ve never waited as long as you’ve waited for this pear tree, but several things I’ve planted havent turned out how I expected, and my first inclination is always to yank the thing. But usually I end up waiting. Maybe tinkering around, seeing if I can give it anything to help it out (different fertilizer, more sun, less sun, whatever.) Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t, but if it doesn’t, I can pull it without hesitation and regret at that point, because I know I gave it every reasonable chance.
I hope it didn’t seem as though I was saying I doubted that some tree’s fruit improves as they get older and more mature. I’ve seen enough proof of that in earlier testimonials about it and then again on this thread. My (poor) attempt at humor was based on the fact that I tend to overuse the philosophy…in orther words, I act as though there has never been a tree in my orchard that deserves removal because I ALWAYS just tell myself “it will get better with age”. Some just don’t! But its reassuring to know that a lot of them obviously do.
I doubt anybody thought you were challenging the conventional wisdom that many trees produce better fruit as they age. Heck, it’s pretty clear that even relatively mature trees, a description that fits about 1/3 of my orchard, have good years followed by a bad year. Ellison’s Orange has fruited three times for me. The first year the apples had a nice enough flavor but were off-puttingly soft and mushy. Last year I figured out if I picked the apples a bit before full color, they were really good, whereas those I left to color up completely were reasonably well-flavored but soft and mushy again. I thought I’d broken the code on that variety here in my hot, dry summer conditions. This year most of the fruit sunburned - a problem across my orchard with many varieties that hadn’t sunburned appreciably before - and regardless of when I picked them, sunburned or not, they were soft and the flavor was not very good.
Even a few varieties that are supposed to do well in my conditions and have several times in the past weren’t all that good this year. Freyberg, a great apple here in previous seasons and one well liked by a few on this forum, was terrible this year, a first for this apple. I could go on (it was a pretty weird year here, though several of my apples produced magnificent crops).
The lesson: last season’s results do not predict future results, at least not in thinly documented and somewhat marginal appIe and pear growing country like mine. I knew this when I started the thread, but the shipova fruit was so disappointing and accounts on the internet so few and far between, I hoped to pick a few brains of other shipova growers. Alas, seems like I’m in an exclusive club of shipova fruiters here.
The verdict: my shipova gets a stay of execution for at least another year, probably longer. Cudos to clarkinks for the link to the article on using OHxF97 as an inter stem on the shipova. That is the way I’ll go with this tree if I ever graft it over to Euro pears.
I’ve had Shipova for years.(15?) It does take forever to bear. The fruit is reasonably good but not special. In my climate, it suffers terribly from fungal diseases with our wet springs. I grafted it onto aronia, like one green world offers. It was more precocious but even more disease riddled. It is not especially good tasting in my opinion. The only advantage as a pear is that you can eat it off the tree. You don’t have to bring it in and let it ripen in a paper bag with a banana. For all the disease and a mediocre flavored pear, I am giving up on Shipova.
John S
PDX OR
A good 20 years ago at a NAFEX convention I tasted a shipova brought in from the germplasm repository in Oregon. Blew me away with its great flavor and how the taste remained in my mouth for a long time. So I bought one–don’t recall from where, but I do remember that it was on a OHxF rootstock. It has grown (OH BOY! several inches a year, and two years ago gave 3 fruits, as disappointing as everyone else’s on this forum. Just that I can’t understand why the ones I tasted those years ago were so excellent.
I have mine on pyres betulifolia rootstock. I planted at about 10 years ago. It reached a certain size and seems stunted. No fruit yet. Lee Reich visited me and said don’t get rid of it it takes a while to bear but it is worth the wait. So I’ll keep it. I also tried grafting a action from it into aronia. I hope that comes to bearing quickly as I heard.
I had a Shipova for about 10 years until it died of fire blight. It had superb fruit, as good or better than the best pears I’ve ever eaten. I’m in the California central valley.
Glad to hear the Shipova is getting a “stay”. I tasted some a few years ago at a Washington state festival near the Canadian border. I remember it being excellent as was the sweet seaberry (? variety) and Karmijn apple.