I eat quince when I play baseball against 25 year olds. I’m almost 60 and the pectin helps against inflammation. QUince has more pectin than any other fruit. It also tastes good.
john S
PDX OR
2 Likes
…and quince is the “hardball” of fruits.
4 Likes
It’s dense enough that I eat almost all of it in slices or frozen and thawed out.
John S
PDX OR
1 Like
centigonal-I don’t hear about people growing quinces on the East Coast very much. I would check with @scottfsmith , because it sounds like they get a lot of diseases back there.
John S
PDX OR
I’d really like to try to grow some on the east coast. I assume they get rust and fire blight pretty bad. What can a quince successfully be grafted onto? Aren’t there supposed to be one or two varieties that are better for fresh eating than others???
Yes there are several considered better for fresh eating. It is usually mentioned in the nursery listings.
Re: east coast growing, I personally had big problems with rust and fireblight. I now spray a synthetic so rust is not much of a problem, but I found they were super susceptible to fireblight and were helping get my apples sick which were nearby. So for the apples I felt I had to remove them. I later added some seedlings which are supposed to be fireblight-resistant. Indeed they have been pretty good on that account. One of them is now fruiting, the deer have been eating the fruits so they must not be too bad (I have not gotten a ripe one yet).
3 Likes
I grow one, I think it’s shirin or smyrna variety.
but from what I’ve read & seen, I feel like quince needs a program of collecting varieties from various places (the gene pool) and a breeding program to develop a number of new and improved varieties, especially in terms of disease resistance (fire blight, rust and others), attractive and coordinated fruit-shape, and the ability to eat it like apples & pears.
because it is a forgotten/neglected crop
3 Likes
Good to know about diseases.
Is Rich’s good for fresh eating? I read the listing as saying that when I bought it, but on reread it doesn’t technically say that.
The only one that I read that has more disease-resistance might be Claribel. Any others?
I used to have 9+ quince trees on east coast/Philly and got some fruit (would get rust each year on some branches but I’d just cut those off). But the neighbors put up pine trees along the fenceline and less and less sunlight go into that area as the pines grew taller, then they seemed to get more and more major disease (maybe fireblight?) and i had to get rid of alot of them.
I have never grown anything on the East Coast. However, the best ones for fresh eating in my opinion are Kuganskaya and Crimea. That’s all I still grow. From observations around here, Pineapple seems to be the one that can really get by without any spraying at all. I just use compost tea on mine here.
John S
PDX OR
2 Likes
My PDX ‘pineapple’ quince, now in-ground for 29 years, was sprayed once with lime sulfur 20+ years ago. No spraying since. It gets significant leaf-spot and a touch of rust every year, but looks good from a distance and is productive.
2 Likes
I don’t know, I’m sure there are some varieties (Google search indicates a Greek research for varieties that are tolerant to fire blight; in " Screening Quince Cultivars and Hybrids for Resistance to Fire Blight" title), but good exposure to the sun and good care are important for the plant health, even if it is a resistant variety.
I think crossing different varieties (genetically distant; from different places) will give us more tolerant/disease-resistant and healthier offspring (hybrid vigor/outbreeding enhancement), due to the bad inbreeding effect on quince (self-pollinating and population bottleneck)
3 Likes
Just wanted to leave an update and say that, based on the responses to this post, I’ve decided to hold off on quince until I get my hands on a fireblight-resistant variety. I’ve got my hands full this spring establishing peach trees and setting up garden beds for my annuals anyway.
2 Likes
You are welcome to some wood of my fireblight-resistant seedling if you want. Hopefully I will be able to taste it this coming year to verify it is good. An unripe one was astringent but I think that was mostly due to the unripeness. If it comes out too astringent for eating that is no loss to me, I’ll add to my cider!
5 Likes
Thanks Scott!
Where did you get those from? I have been trying to find some FB resistant quince, but in the ads they never seem to mention FB. How bad is the rust?
I got them as seedlings from the USDA, they were extras they had from a grow-out they did. I think you can get scions of some of the ones they grew out via ARS now as well. They are crosses of some Bulgarian quince breeding program for FB-resistant quince.
Rust is nothing now that I spray myclobutanil. I was being 100% organic back when I had the quince.
2 Likes
Bulgaria’s best FB resistant varieties are ‘Hemus’ and ‘Triumph’.
Greece’s best FB resistant varieties are named 'PI 26’, ‘PI 37’, ‘PI 41’ and ‘PI 49’, breeds from pomology institute of Naoussa, Greece.
Iran’s best FB resistant variety are ‘Viduja’ (ويدوجا)
8 Likes
and ‘Behta’ (بهتا) (but not as widely sold by nurseries as Viduja).
4 Likes
Thanks for that list. In the US I think all we have is Triumph crosses, I have two of them now. I am going to fence my tree this year to keep the deer away, I really want to try out the fruits.
1 Like