Wednesday was a bit of a mix of a day with some sunny spells interspersed with some short heavy showers and once again on the cold side.
Although we only had a quick visit to the plot on Tuesday afternoon we did pick all our pears which easily parted from the tree so are supposed to be ready to harvest. The crop weights are shown on the little diagram below which is an extract from my GrowVeg plans.
Invincible has produced the heaviest crop and indeed the tree is now starting to look more upright as the weight of pears has been removed from its young branches. Having tested one of the pears they will need some time to ripen fully as they are still rock hard.
Red Williams produced a nice little crop of pears and these are slightly softer than Invincible and if like me you enjoy pears on the firm side are ready for eating.
Finally Delsanne which has only produced a crop of less than 1kg. We haven't tried any of these yet so they may not be ready for eating. This is our pear tree with fire blight which Sue has blogged about here
I’ll have to check on the conference pear tree growing at the back of our home greenhouse to see if those pears part from the tree easily. If they do I'd better get them picked before the next strong wind does the job for me and they smash the the greenhouse roof.
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I have one branch of pears on my tree - Beurre Hardy I think, or Doyenne du Comice - where a bee must have travelled up one side and pollinated it. Nothing else though. That branch is bending very low now, but the pears are still very firm so I've left them for now.
ReplyDeleteI'm never sure when to pick pears. Unlike apples I don't think they ripen fully on the tree. Must do some checking up!
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