North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Anton Callaway <marillen@earthlink.net>]

I'm not sure I can add much after the excellent comments & suggestions of 
Ethan, Lucky and the rest, especially at this late date, but as I'm just down 
the road a piece, here's my 2 cents FWIW.

I've heard it said from several university folk that pears can't be grown in 
the Southeast.  It just ain't so.  I tried a variety of pears, mostly 
high-quality pears for fresh eating in N. GA as well as a few Asians & 
hybrids there & in Wake County, NC.  It appears that the lore of pears being 
inviable as a crop in the SE comes from experience with the common communis 
cultivars, like Bartlett, Bosc & Anjou.  A few pure communis has survived 
well here including Michigan 437, Warren, Magness, Comice (be cautious 
scaling this one up- I think I just got lucky, but my tree is over 20 years 
old w/ little blight).  You really won't be able to tell how susceptible they 
are until they have bloomed heavily for a couple of years.  I even got a good 
crop of Bartlett (I think, it was a mis-labelled tree), but then it 
practically exploded with blight the next year.  Cultivars to stay away from 
include:  Buerre Superfin, Bartlett, Belle Lucrative, Monterrey, Clapp's 
Favorite & sports, Harvest Queen, Carrick,  Duchess.

If you're after cider, I agree with Ed,  some of the Asians including Shinko, 
Megietsu & Ya Li are good choices for blight resistance and lots of juice.

Hope this helps,

Anton
Zone 8

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Beckett <thomas@tbeckett.com>
Sent: Apr 5, 2004 12:40 AM
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [NAFEX] pears & fireblight

Last month I had the opportunity to speak to an orchard fruit expert 
from NCSU, and asked him about growing pears in North Carolina.  I'm 
interested in using pears in cider and/or blended with apple cider.  He 
told me that pears are not commercially viable in North Carolina because 
of the fireblight risk.  Pears are apparently much too susceptible, and 
fireblight is endemic and  spreads easily in our relatively humid climate.

I've been mulling this over, and have a couple of questions for the 
collective wisdom of NAFEX:
- Are pears any more at risk for fireblight than some types of dwarfing 
apple rootstock such as M26?
- Are their heirloom "old Southern" pear varieties that are resistant to 
fireblight and might be cultivated here on a small scale?

Many thanks, in advance, for y'all's thoughts.

Thomas Beckett
Durham/Hendersonville
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