North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Richard Moyer <ramoyer@gmail.com>]

Donna,
Agreed that Shinko, when not thinned enough and early enough, makes
lots of 'tree potatoes'.  Even the years I've pruned and thinned
correctly, my two 'Shinko' trees were way behind Korean Giant in fruit
eating quality.

Korean Giant is sensitive to number of leaves photosynthesizing for
each fruit.  That is, the more healthy leaves per fruit, size and
quality of fruit improves markedly.  2-3  years ago, I purposely left
one large limb unthinned on our largest KG tree.  The fruit on the
rest of the tree excellent, as usual.  The fruit on the unthinned limb
small and insipid.  The 6 Asian pear cultivars we have grown are like
'Goldrush' apple, in that if thinning not done early and thoroughly,
fruit quality and size really suffers.

The summer I worked at NCGR in Corvallis, I spent many lunches walking
(yet gaining weight) in the 1000 cultivar pear collection.  As these
were not thinned, most of the Asians were 'tree potatoes'.  But there
were some with decent flavor even when so heavily loaded.  Did not
count leaves per fruit, but should have.  A number of Euro pears did
not set fruit and bear so heavily, and hence many (most?) were of
better quality on unthinned trees than were the Asian pears.

Richard Moyer
SW VA