I was waiting for my few Hosui to ripen this year, finally tried one yesterday. It was super juicy and already getting on the softer side of ideal. Flavor not as strong this year. Chojuro, Korean Giant, and Seuri Li still far from ripe. I didn’t realize Hosui ripened earlier than all of them. Its on NW side of multi-grafted tree.
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How do you rank Seuri against the others? Hosui is an early mid ripener. Mine are already done, but everything is a little early this year.
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Seuri Li ripens late and this is my first set of more than a few. Hopefully I’ll get to try them over a harvest window.
I see why Hosui is the standard around here. It is great.
The good Seuri Li I’ve had from tastings, or visiting the germplasm repository were good, and unique flavor for real fruit. It reminded me of my memories (from 30+ years back) of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum. That was enough for me to choose it as one of the few Asian pears that I’ve grafted.
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Where are you getting your Asian pears from? What company has good stock and hopefully good prices? I need to go through the whole post to see what information is listed. What do you grow and how are they? Any advice would be appreciated.
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Thank you!
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They also add slices of pears in their cold noodle dishes.
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And with beef tartar.
Just saw that in a variety show.
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I’m growing them just for the cold noodle dishes.
Everything else is bonus, including the beef tartare.
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I get drawn in to growing something new while watching other culture’s shows. If not a new ingredient, then a new way to use one that I can already get.
Sadly so many recipes are no starters for me because I can’t get the ingredients (at least quickly and affordability) .
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@Lukeott You can also get a large amount of information from clarkins but entering “@clarkinks Pears” in the search box.
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Hey mamuang — bumping this now that I’m looking at planting some in 5b NH next spring. It seems at the time of this thread everyone was high on korean giant / olympic giant (if they are indeed the same thing). I think I need to plant two, right? What’s been working best for you (I think we are nearby)?
I’m looking at https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/collections/pear-trees? and was thinking of ordering an Olympic Giant and Hosui, or maybe an Olympic Giant and 20th century. But I think I read somewhere that European pears will pollinate Asian pears, and my dad (whose land this is on) likes European pears, so I am also tempted to plant an Olympic Giant + a european pear of some kind.
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Korean Giant has several names. One of them is Olympic. Olympic ripens around 2nd week of Oct where I am in central MA. But it can be picked from the first week to the last week of Oct.
Hosui ripens 3 weeks earlier. I like them both and are russeted skin Asian pears.
So far, the only Euro pear that does not give me a headache is Harrow Sweet. By headache I mean not knowing when they will ripen, requiring refrigeration (at varying length of time) to ripen them properly. These issues turn me off of Euro pears.
Other people can tell you what Euro pears they recommend.
In colder zones like ours, most pears bloom at the same time. Any pear including Bradford pear can close pollinate your pear tree.
In general, Asian pears set fruit sooner like 3-4 years after planting. Many Euro pears can take a lot longer. Harrow Sweet is precocious, fortunately. It also tastes very good.
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Thanks. I plan to definitely order an Olympic/KG. I have planted two Hosui at my girlfriend’s down in the boston area so thought I would choose another variety for up here. fast-growing-trees sells the funky “four european pears on a single tree” grafts and I figured I’d grab one of those for pollination and Chaos Pear!
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Forget to mention, I would buy my fruit trees from many other nurseries before I look at Fast Growing Tree nursery.
One of the good ones Schlabach nursery. It does not have online presence. You can call for a catalog and send in an order by mail.
Check this reference out. It is in the Reference category.
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Thanks for the tip and list of refs!
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Fast growing trees seems to have by far the most expensive trees as well. Ridiculous prices for a single tree.
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Does anybody grow shinko in the southwest? How did it fare?
How is dripping honey’s tolerance or resistance to fire blight?
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I have a Shinko pear tree in 8A North Georgia. It will be on its 4th leaf this spring.
It fruited this year — the first of my young pears to do so — and the fruit was good. It has more attractive leaves here than my other pears — very dark green. It also appears easier to train, with wider natural branch angles.
The fireblight resistance is living up to the hype so far. It is planted not far from where two mature apple trees had to be removed due to fireblight. Last spring — a particularly warm and wet one following a late freeze — it was covered in fresh pruning wounds, had bark damage along the trunk from a rabbit who must have gotten through a treeguard, and flowered very heavily, yet not a trace of fireblight.
I’m glad I put it in.
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Fast is just like Amazon…they raise no plants, (or if they do, prove it), just sell somebody else’s plants. To people that do shopping from a computer or smart phone instead of phone calls or going to a ‘brick & mortar’ nursery.
A lot of convenience/couch potato shoppers are gullible and think they get good deals.
To me, a good deal is an apple or pear tree in October that’s marked off by 75% to 93%!
From the big chain retailers.
(And if I don’t like the cultivar, I’ll graft it to something else.)
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@BlueBerry Been doing that for years. I can’t even count the number of $5 trees I have. Unfortunately since the virus everybody sells out every year now. Last year I got burnt on some mail order TWIG rootstocks. Ended up buying several of those $30 6-7 footers from Lowes to use as root stock. Cost more, but the grafts took great and shrunk off two years.
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