This was the first year I picked KG aka Olympic very late. Usually, I pick them around mid Oct. This year, I’ve been very busy. Some had dropped here and there for the past few weeks. I picked the remaining today. It was weird picking pears with almost no leaves on the tree.
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They look nice! I’m debating whether or not to transplant my Drippin Honey tree or not. It has been in the ground about 4 or 5 years, but is barely over 1" diameter. It was originally a dwarf Starking Delicious but the deer ate it back to the ground two years in a row. Then I grafted Drippin Honey on it, and it grew about 4 ft last year. I have two other Asian Pear trees doing well, so I might go ahead and move it since it is too close to my Redhaven peach
I’ve found Drippin Honey cracked a lot in our wet summer. KG hardly cracks by comparison.
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Mam, they are beautiful. I hope Charlie is up to making buckets of ‘holiday fruitcake with apples! Well done, they are incredible!
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pictures like this keep me motivated to keep trying to improve, hoping one day I can have a tree that looks like that.
Great job.
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Drippin Honey cracks badly if it rains as they ripen in July or August. Typically those are very dry months in Kansas. DH flavor is excellent. Korean Giant is very good for the reasons you mentioned in Kansas as well. Korean Giant Is a good pear in most locations. I don’t want anyone to think Drippin Honey is bad Drippin' Honey Asian Pear
Thank you, Jim and Mrs. G.
Jim - Glad the pics are inspiring. Asian pears are easy to grow for me (for now). I don’t even bag them. Too many to bag!!!
@mrsg47 - I can’t find dessert recipes for Asian pears. I don’t know what to do with them but eating fresh.
@clarkinks and @ILParadiseFarm - Taste is subjective as we know. Climate and soil has a lot to do with taste, too.
I’ve not had a chance to eat any good Drippin Honey as most of them cracked. The ones that survived were not impressive so far but this was only a second year. I need a couple more years to find out.
How old is that KG tree?
I would cook them like a hard Bosc pear and poach them in red wine with sugar and thinly sliced orange peel, You will have core them and peel them before poaching. When taken out of the oven, cool to room temp and stuff them with almond cream. Sooo good.
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10 years?
It is productive from year 3 in ground. I have kept it at 8-9 ft. If I had let it grow, the yield would be a lot more but I’d not be abke to pick many of those pears .
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Also have you ever had spiced crabapples? I would use the same recipe for your Asian pears! They would be delicious too.
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Will see if my head chef would agree to do it. A pears seem to contianna lot more water tgan E pears.
Thank you
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Really worth a try.
Oops i thought they were apples at first. Sorry🤪
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Once Drippin Honey are mature the pears keep a really long time in storage. The trees need to be mature for the pears to be at their best.
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@ILParadiseFarm
Yes Drippin Honey is very early. Some years that means ripe fruit in July in Kansas. it’s fruit are at the peak of flavor about 3 years after they start producing fruit. People who have tried them will call before they are ripe asking if they are ready. Korean Giant are a good fall pear though it’s like comparing apples and oranges because they are very different tasting fruits. Both are similar size and very tasty in very different ways. They are both very sugary and refreshing. The chojuro @39thparallel grows are butterscotch flavored and really delicious fruit. Yali were suggested by @tonyOmahaz5 and are very refreshing but the most different pear I’ve had. So many great fruits to try! We all have our favorite.
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My Asian pears harvest did not go well this year. I got stink bug problem and yellow wasp problem. I have about 10+ varieties now. I think KG is more reliable , large size, nice sweet flavor among Asian pear I have, and it keeps well. Drippin honey is smaller than KG but ripe earlier than KG. The most exciting Asian pear I grafted is LaiYang Li, a very famous pear named after the city where it was discovered from ShanDong province in China. It is very juicy, tender, mild sweet, thick skin and have long storage time.
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@IL847
Annie,
Korean Giant is still a fairly new pear to me so I’ve not seen its full potential yet. I do like what I see! It weighs around a pound like Drippin Honey. If Drippin Honey is not thinned the fruit will be smaller but it produces lots of it. Here is a picture of my largest Korean Giant this year.
The pictures below are of my Drippin Honey trees because I don’t want people to get the wrong idea and think that it’s not as good as Korean Giant. It’s biggest draw back is in places that get summer rains after dry periods it will crack badly in some cases.
If it rains at the wrong time here is what will happen to Drippin Honey
They have cracked this bad just 1 year for me out of the many many years I’ve grown them. It’s not unusual to get a few cracks but this year we had the worse drought since the 1930’s and then it rained so I’m not expecting these conditions again but it could happen again like this year. My concern is some locations may get heavy rains in July and August normally and this would be a bad pear for them to grow.
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I have always thinned my fruit heavily to improve size and taste and to avoid branch breaking. I thinned thousands of KG off in3-4 rounds at the beginning of the season.
Unfortunately, many of my KG harvest this year are rather smaller. Very disappointing. I feel like a hypocrite. In the past I had KG that weighed a lb or more.
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Clark， you got a lot of pears. l agree that DH is very productive, can grow a lot of fruits. It needs to be thinned to make up the fruit size. In my climate, I haven’t seen crack issue on drippin honey . Compare DH with KG, I think KG flash is dense , or little harder to take a bite.DH is tender and juicy. KG is larger, typically around 11/2. lb each, some are near 2 lb each.but I have not yet seen DH grow near to that size.
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