Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Shinko, etc comments again

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Shinko, etc comments again
  • Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2010 09:29:37 -0500

Richard, I think you have answered a large part of my question. Shinko will have to be thinned to taste decent, and I don't like Asian pears well enough to do it. Korean Giant, what's left of the tree after this year's fireblight attack, has made just a few large pears these last 2 years, so their superior flavor is partly due to the higher leaf to fruit ratio.
I also note that Shinko only rates a 4 in taste testing at Corvallis. Burnt Ridge says it's late, and Joe Postman admits that late pears tend to get poor ratings at Corvallis because their season is too short for them. Burnt Ridge, north of Corvallis, says they are among the very best Asian pears. That still doesn't sound like much of an endorsement, but I will try to severely thin at least one of the Shinko trees early next year while converting them to other varieties. At least the 2 trees I have of it are not too big to work with.
In my pear notebook (at home right now) I have listed the quality ratings for lots of Corvallis's blight resistant varieties. The ratings run 1-9, but they don't give a 9 to anything, and very very few of their 1,000 varieties are given 8's. These include Harrow Delight and Harvest Queen. David Lockwood says that these two did fine in Tenn till they started blooming, and then the blight got them. But Hidden Springs still has one of them, Hector says it's Harvest Queen but the parentage didn't look like it offered much resistance, so I have assumed it was Harrow Delight till this weekend when I noticed the leaf descriptions were noticeably different between the 2. I picked a few leaves, and they look more like HQ. So we'll see. I think I have a few years to wait. Hidden Springs has so much trouble with late freezes, they can't tell me much about the fruit. There are a number of FB resistant cultivars that have quite decent quality ratings. They give a 7 to Okolo, a little known Asian pear that Hansen released. I am extremely curious about that one, and plan to convert one of the Shinkos to it, based on it's description as "delicious flavor" and the 7 rating. I can hardly wait. Pai Li is another one I'm interested in, Corvallis didn't rate it too high, but the description says that it's close to European pears in quality and much liked by Europeans. It's also a late pear.
What you say about leaf surface is very interesting. Corvallis gave Atlantic Queen only a 3, but it's quite late. I can't find out much about it, and it's one I grafted 3 years ago so I've had a bit more time to observe it. It's grafted high on a Pineapple pear which has leaves to spare, so maybe I'll get a taste one day. The fact is that despite it's fire blight resistant, it gets leaf spot really bad, and so the 3 bare AQ branches are obvious amid the leafy Pineapple branches. I don't know about leaf spot at Corvallis, but Prof Drain's releases always had comments on leaf spot and which trees retained their leaves all summer. I have seen Pineapple get it pretty bad in some wet summers, but most of the time it does fine. The Pineapple is crisp like an Asian, but tart so I like it. I have noticed that the Kieffer, rated only a 3 by Corvallis, can get pretty nice for eating out of hand some years, but other years it stays too sour. Maybe again, the amount of leaf surface per pear to make sugars? Because it too is prone to overbearing. Donna




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page