Yes its going to produce fruit but i think you will need to stake it. Congratulations thats a big accomplishment.
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Need advice on ripening Warren pear.
They seem to be ripening .
Some on the ground, some come off when tilted up. Some are hanging tight.
None are edible stage yet. Need some “ after ripening”
Is this best done at room temp. On the counter .?
Or in the fridg.?
Over the years , I have had very mixed results ripening pears.
Some years keeping them in cold storage into the winter , with good results.
Some years they turn to mush inside before they appear ripe.
Some years they never seem to ripen.
So … ?
Looking for advice here.
What works for you. Especially with Warren ?
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@Hillbillyhort i’ve never had trouble ripening warren on the table but the fridge would be better for this pear. Its very high quality when at its best
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For how long you would keep it in the fridge for proper ripening?
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Two to four weeks in the fridge should be enough for Warren. I’ve never had more than a few off of my tree, so they haven’t lasted longer than that, though I’ve read they can store for two months. I’ll test that this year, as I finally have a largish crop, maybe a bushel.
This is very exciting, as it is the best pear I’ve ever eaten, much better than Comice from my orchard, which also has a large and attractive crop here for the first time. It’s been an excellent year for pears here.
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This story below tells the story of warren which is frequently compared to its parents seckle x comice. Once you taste it you will know why! Most years its very delicious.
It is worth noting i also grow magness which is identical in flavor but similar in appearance, so much so i cant tell the fruit apart. Disease resistance and production can be different between the magness and warren seedlings by site . Magness produces earlier at my location. If you want to compare them check out other threads we posted on both using the search.
Here is the article on warren
Market Watch: The magnificent Warren pear - Los Angeles Times
"With the partial exception of Bartletts, great locally grown pears are scarce at farmers markets in Southern California, where warm winters and disease render cultivation problematic. This makes it all the more special that Al Courchesne of Frog Hollow Farm, a rock star organic fruit grower from Brentwood, Calif., an hour east of San Francisco, will make a cameo appearance the next two Wednesdays at the Santa Monica farmers market to sell his legendary Warren pears.
Arguably the most delicious pear variety in the world, praised by the likes of Alice Waters, Martha Stewart Living and Oprah Winfrey, the Warren combines the best features of its ancestors, with the intensely sweet, rich, spicy flavor of Seckel, and the larger size and voluptuous juiciness of Comice. And the mystery of its origins, heretofore never fully unraveled, is almost as delicious as its flavor.
The trail that leads to the Warren starts with fire blight, a bacterial disease that makes growing most pears virtually impossible in areas where warm spring rains are common; a winter chill is also required, which is why very few European pears are cultivated in the southern half of California.
Historically, one of the few pears of quality that was resistant to blight was the Seckel, tiny but superbly flavored, and discovered near Philadelphia around 1760. Were it not for its diminutive size, it would doubtless be the preeminent pear on the market today.
Starting before 1900, pear breeders sought to hybridize the disease resistance of the Seckel into larger-fruited varieties. In 1920, Merton B. Waite, a U.S. Department of Agriculture breeder in Maryland, came up with a seedling of the Seckel called the Giant Seckel that bore much larger fruit, and was still blight-resistant. But it was not quite as flavorful, and it never became widely grown.
Breeders working for the USDA in the mid-20th century crossed the Giant Seckel and the Comice and in 1960 released Magness, which was blight-resistant and unequaled in flavor. It was fairly widely planted at first, but it soon proved to be an erratic producer and mostly disappeared from cultivation in subsequent decades.
A curiously similar variety named the Warren was discovered by a highly respected amateur fruit grower, Thomas O. Warren, in a most unlikely locale, Hattiesburg, Miss., about 1976. In the first published description of his namesake pear, a short article that appeared in Pomona magazine in 1986, Warren wrote that he found the original tree “growing in the backyard of a friend.” Its ancestry at first was unknown.
He shared bud wood with fellow enthusiasts in the North American Fruit Explorers organization. Another story, meanwhile, circulated that he had “found it planted in front of a post office and USDA soil conservation service office.” However, according to Ram Fishman, a nurseryman and fruit connoisseur who wrote an excellent online essay about Magness and Warren pears, when questioned further about the variety, Warren allowed that he discovered it among “the remains of a test site used by Mississippi State University.” Aha!
Some seedlings from the cross from which the Magness was selected were sent to a branch station in Meridian, Miss., that has long since closed, according to Kearneysville, W. Va.-based Richard Bell, the current pear breeder for the USDA. It is likely that this station sent some of the seedlings, or grafted trees, to Mississippi State for testing, and that the experimental orchard had been abandoned by the 1970s. The hot, humid conditions in the Deep South are murder on pear trees, most of which would have succumbed to fire blight, especially if unsprayed. A resistant tree would have been extremely conspicuous; if a pear tree could survive untended in Mississippi, it could make it anywhere.
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Fortunate that Warren “discovered” that pear.
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Thanks Clark for interesting history behind Warren. I’m an old NAFEX-er and remember reading articles by T.O. Warren in Pomona, a fabulous quarterly in the old days.
I have my first three Warren pears this year on a branch I grafted on Potomac a few years ago. Today I lifted one that had colored up nicely and it came off in my hand. I ate it right off the tree, pretty good.
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@hambone im a former nafex member as well as are many of the long term members. We learned a lot from nafex at the time. Potomac that you mention you are growing is another very high quality pear similar to anjou. Sounds like you still know your pears!
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Warren pear,:
Yes , a long time NAFEX member here too.,!
I met T.O. Warren at a NAFEX meeting in the early 80s. ( 1980… 1982 ?)
A true southern gentleman.
Reminded me of a Baptist preacher…
Except . Instead of preaching of religion.
It was the Warren pear.
Preaching of its great fruit quality, and NO significant blight in the Deep South .
He was so excited about it , and was on a mission to spread the word.!
He converted me right there!
So . Yes . It is slow to bear fruit, 8+ years.
No significant blight, good quality if properly picked and ripened .
This is where I have difficulty, …picking at the right time , and ripening.
Not just with warren pear, but all pears,
I have had mixed results from year to year with pears ,properly ripening them.
Yesterday, after a wind. Many warrens on the ground .I picked the rest. They came off with the tilt ,Several bushels.
Filled the refrigerator. And a bushel at room temp.
None really at the ripe eating stage.
Will update as they ripen , or not.
I like the idea of planting pears.
They can live and produce , decades longer than most fruit.
If ,? Blight resistant ,!
Warren is.
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I grafted my warren pear onto an aronia bush. Produces much faster. We don’t get fireblight yet. Many more heat units in our climate every year. It could be coming.
I like the fruit.
John S
PDX OR
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Warren update .
10 days on counter ,covered with plastic.
All but 4 out of a bu. Perfectly ripe.
Sliced and put in freezer.
The ones in refrigerator 10 day. None ripe. That’s good , I want to store them a while
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Hi everyone. I’m new to this forum, but have been a member of Back Yard Fruit Growers for many years. I found you because I’m getting impatient with a Warren that I grafted so long ago that I can’t remember when it was; I think 8 or 9 years. At this point it looks pretty nice, trunk about 4" diameter, height 10’ to 12’. Last year it finally showed a few flowers, this year I was encouraged with the number of flowers, but no fruit set either year. My wife has made some pointed comments about how fruit trees are supposed to produce fruit, and we have a really limited yard size, so I was thinking of taking it out until reading this, and reminding myself that we lost some apples to fireblight and this tree does seem pretty immune.
I love the description of the fruit and this page is encouraging. Can anyone recommend a good pollination partner to graft onto this Warren to make pollination more likely and more productive? My other pear, on the other side of the house, is a Frankenbush with Kieffer (I think) and Clapp’'s Favorite from my Dad’s yard, and Bosc, and I don’t think their bloom timing matches the Warren very well, plus they aren’t very close by. I can’t add another tree near the Warren, so grafting in a few branches, hopefully the same variety, seems like my best option.
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David- welcome to the forum. I’m not a pear expert but I have one branch of Warren (mid-season bloomer) grafted into Potomac- mid-season bloomer and an excellent tasting fireblight resistant pear. I can’t find a good bloom date chart for pears on google- I bet @clarkinks knows one.
I recall reading that Warren blossoms do not appeal to bees so grafting in one or even two other mid-season bloomers is a good idea. Just be sure to check blight resistance if you’re in blight country. Dave Wilson nursery calls Warren partially self-fertile but I recall other growers having a hard time getting it pollinated.
I bend my pear scaffolds to near horizontal when young- that changes hormone flow and speeds up fruiting. In older rigid branches you can cut a “hinge” on the underside of the branch where it meets the trunk then pull the branch horizontal with soft rope or similar. See hinge discussion: How to cut a hinge?
Not pruning until after it fruits speeds up fruiting.
Some rootstocks also delay fruiting but I can’t speak to that.
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@dwootton @hambone
Pollination can be challenging but it does not need to be. Ewart aka Karl’s favorite is a good tree to graft it in the same tree with Is it worth it to grow the Warren pear
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Although I love pears, I had never heard of Warren until I tried it a few years ago from an orchard about 10 miles away from me. We don’t have a lot of winter chill here, but this nearby orchard has great success growing fruit that is not considered low-chill.
I fell in love with the Warren pear the first time I tried it. The taste and texture were amazing. When I renovated my front yard in 2020, I finally had the opportunity to plant pear trees, and Warren was my first choice. The others were Bartlett, Seckel, and California. Bartlett and California are both blooming right now. Warren has not bloomed, but is in full leaf and put on a lot of vegetative growth last year, so I am hopeful it will succeed here if I am just patient.
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Thanks @hambone for the advice. Actually, my scaffold branches are fairly horizontal near the trunk, but they love to bend skyward as they grow each year, and the top-facing buds make the most vigorous branches off the scaffold. I can influence the younger tips to stay in the right direction so I don’t think I need to cut a hinge, but tell me more about not pruning until after it fruits. Since it has not fruited yet, do you mean timing my pruning toward summer or even fall for now, rather than dormant pruning. Or do you mean leaving the tree unpruned until after the first year it sets fruit? I’m nervous about the latter, especially with the tendency for everything to turn/grow upwards
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@dwootton On my two pear trees I followed advice of @alan to delay any pruning at all until after the tree produces first fruit. Or as Dr. Jim Cummins says: “plant your pear then lock your pruners in the kitchen drawer until it fruits.” It worked- got fruit in two to three years on semi-dwarf rootstock.
Then when you do prune “find the tree within the tree.” That means take your time to ID your keeper scaffolds and prune away the excess.
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It is true many remove their pear fruit wood every year during pruning season. I’ve watched them do it and people still did not listen. Then they talked again about not getting pears.
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Yeah, you can’t try and keep a pear on standard root a size that you can pick from the ground. Something gotta’ give. It’s the fruit if you keep cutting.
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