North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

I complained bitterly in 2009 about my Shinko fruit tasting like potatoes, and I found them little better in 2010.  I know the tree overcropped a bit, and the fruit were small...

I had this same problem with my Hosui Asian pear this year. (Last year, I didn't like them much, either, but they weren't like this.)  I couldn't eat a single one. There was just no taste to them at all. However, I do know that I didn't thin them enough, and the fruit were very small.

I've been struggling with the tree, anyway. I just can't get it to branch decently. It's the weirdest looking thing! I'm about ready to give up on it! Does anyone here have something good to say about Hosui Asian pears?

Now my Starking Hardy Giant (Korean Giant? - I hate when Stark Bros. does this!) is a beautiful tree. It's vigorous, but not too vigorous, branches beautifully, and even over-cropped, it produces big fruit that taste good. It's a wonderful tree.

The New Century right next to it isn't vigorous at all. Its branches are tiny little things that hardly deserve the name. Even one fruit on a branch is too heavy, so I only got about six fruit from the tree. And the skin on the pears is relatively thin so bugs like it, and so do birds. The fruit tastes good, but it's always so damaged that it won't keep long.

Note that I tried putting nylon booties on my apples and Asian pears to try to keep the blue jays from pecking holes in them. It didn't work - or not well - for the New Century Asian pears or the Gala apples, but with other varieties it did seem to work. I think it worked better with really hard fruit. A few would would be pecked, but not all of them. So I might try it again next year. Netting the trees is really a LOT of work. And hanging up stuff to frighten the birds does absolutely nothing.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

http://garthright.blogspot.com/

--
I try to teach my students that a good experimentalist does not need any critics: he or she is his/her own worst enemy. If you don't feel a sincere drive to debunk, test and revise your own conclusions, you should be doing something else for a living. - Juan Collar