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