Can I have some recommendation for which asian pear varieties grow well in NYC, sweet and little to no tartness? I really like the Shin Li Asian pears I get at the Chinese grocery stores so wondering if shin li is good for NYC. Then I’ll need others as pollinators.
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Shinseiki for August harvest, sweet and very juicy. Korean Giant or Olympic for October Harvest. Super large and real sweet.
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Sheri,
I like @tonyOmahaz5’s suggestions. Shin Li is a CA-bred pear. I do not know how well it will do in our east coast and how disease resistance it will be (or not be). The west and east coast have very different climate.
The biggest issue with pears is fire blight since this disease can kill trees out right. KG is disease resistant. Shinseiki is not as resistant but not the most susceptible.
If you don’t have space, just plant a KG and learn to graft. Grafting pears is very easy.
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Would not thininng or minimal thinning cause the KG to not taste as sweet/flavorful?
To keep the Asian pears pest/bug free would using maggot barrier baga be useful?
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Yes, if you do not thin off many little pears (best done when they are very tiny), you will get many small pears that do not taste good. In addition, you risk having branch breakage.
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I don’t know which maggot barrier bags you meant. Most bags do not work against those insects. The ones that can work are paper bags that Japanese or Chinese growers use.
Keep in mind, pears set a lot of fruit. Bagging is labor intensive. Consider spraying Kaolin clay called Surround instead. You can use a search engine here to read up on Surround and other pest protection approaches.
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This is all the “land” I have. Would you think I could plant 2 pear trees here? (thats an apple tree there in the back but I have no idea what type of apple). I’ll be moving all those mint leaves to a pot.
Also, would late ripening (September/October) varieties do better with pest problems?
Ill just leave this here:
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Sheri,
How much sun does that apple get? At least 5 hours would be good. Not eniugh sun will result in poor fruit setting, causing more fungus issue,etc.
Have you look up espaliered pear and apple trees. You can espalier them or shape it to a fan shape, Belgian fence, etc. you could get a Korean Giant and a Shinseiki and espalier them against your fence. A member here @HollyGates, has grown his espaliered apples against the fence with about similar space you have. His is in full sun, I believe.
As for varieties, early or late ripening does not really mean anything re. pest protection. Even without protection, pears tends to survive attacks by pests like plum curculio, oriental fruit moth, coddling moth, stink bugs realatively well all things considered. Pear fruit grows/ expands so rapidly that it could crush eggs deposited in the fruit by those insects resulting in minimal internal fruit damage.
You could grow pears without spray if your don’t mind having pears that may not look their best. Just pray that they don’t get fire blight.
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