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PARING DOWN PEARS

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So Much From Which to Choose

Pear espalier in Mt. Vernon, WA

Pear espalier in Mt. Vernon, WA

Of all the common tree fruits, pears are the easiest to grow — and not just here in New York’s Hudson Valley. My site is admittedly poor for tree fruits, the flat lowland acting like a reservoir into which cold, damp air flows, leading to increased threats from diseases and late frosts. Proximity to acres and acres of forest provides haven for insect pests.

But I’m not complaining; the air might be bad for apples, peaches, cherries, plums, and apricots, but underfoot is rich, well-drained, rock-free river bottom soil that grows very nice vegetables, berries, and many uncommon fruits such as persimmons, cornelian cherries, and kiwifruits. And pears.

Of the more than 3,000 varieties of pears, only a handful are well-known. I figured, as with apples, there must be many varieties better or as good-tasting as the few usually offered in markets. Back in 2004, twenty dwarf apple trees that I’d planted were nearing the end of their productive life. So I dug them out, which left me with space for a number of dwarf or semi-dwarf pear trees. But what varieties to plant? I sought suggestions from other fruit growers, from nursery websites and catalogues (especially Raintree Nursery and Cummins Nursery), from the USDA Pear Germplasm Repository, and books such as the 100-year-old tome The Pears of New York, finally settling on sixteen varieties (listed at the end of this blog post to avoid boring you if you don’t want such detail).

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It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, and Pears

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Whoosh!

Whew! How quickly this growing season seems to have scooted by. I am putting the last plants of the season into the vegetable garden today. These were transplants of Shuko and Prize Choy bok choy, and Blue napa cabbage. I’m eyeing some lettuce transplants, and if I decide that they’re sufficiently large to transplant, they’ll share a bed with the cabbages.Chinese cabbage transplants

Reconsidering, the end of the gardening season isn’t really drawing nigh. The cabbages won’t be large enough to make a real contribution to a stir fry or a batch of kim chi for at least another month. And then, with cool weather and shorter days slowing growth, the plants will just sit there in the garden, doing fine, patiently awaiting harvest.

Other plants awaiting harvest into autumn from plantings over the past few weeks are Hakurei turnips, crunchy, sweet, and spicy fresh in salads, daikon and Watermelon radishes, for salads or kim chi, and, also for salads, lettuce, spinach, arugula, and mustard greens. The last salad stuff will be endive, sown back in early July, and transplanted in early August in a bed previously home to the first planting of bush beans.

The season’s various plantings mesh together nicely. Those bok choy and napa cabbages went into a bed just cleared from the first planting of sweet corn. The bed previously planted with of lettuce, arugula, and spinach seed followed on the heels of onions sown indoors in February, transplanted into the bed in May, and harvested a few weeks ago.

A Whole New Garden, Now

In addition to good timing, the autumn garden — which is like having a whole other garden, except it’s in the same place as the summer garden — demands good soil. That soil has to support this whole other wave of plants.

Through summer, I looked upon any weeds I encountered as potential factories for making more weeds, via spreading seeds and/or roots. Left alone, that weed and its progeny would rob food and water meant for my cabbages and lettuces, and shade my plants into submission.

With that in mind, when I cleared the beds of spent corn or bean plants, I pulled out every weed in addition to the spent vegetable plants. I tried to get roots and all for each weed, which isn’t that difficult if you keep up weeding all summer.

After clearing a bed of weeds and vegetable plants, down went a carpet of compost. Spreading compost on bedA one to two inches deep layer smothers most weeds sprouting from seeds as well as provides nourishment for multiple waves of vegetable plants — for a whole year! (Also provides food and habitat for beneficial soil organisms, protects the surface from washing, and increases the soil’s ability to hold on to both air and moisture.)

So the season hasn’t scooted by; the autumn season is just beginning. There’s still some room for reflecting on the season up to this point. Most notable has been this year’s pear crop.

Pears: Easy To Grow, Hard To Harvest (Correctly)

Among the common tree fruits, pears are the easiest to grow. They’re a bit slow to come into production but are often free of significant pest problems. They’re also pretty trees, all season long, especially the Asian pears.

It’s not all smooth sailing from planting to flowering to harvest to eating for European pears, which includes Bartlett, Bosc, Anjou, and other pears with which most people are most familiar. The problem is knowing when to harvest them. Pears ripen from the inside out, so need to be harvested when mature (whenever that is), then ripened in a (preferably cool) room indoors. Left hanging on the tree too long, and the fruit tastes sleepy, at best, or has turned mushy; harvested too soon and the fruit never loses a grassy flavor. (Asian pears are easy to harvest. When they taste good right off the tree, they’re ripe and ready.)

Frederick Clapp pear tree

Frederick Clapp pear tree

Appearance of the fruit, calendar date, and ease of separation from the stem when lifted with a twist are all indicators of ripeness. I’m finding that few fruits dropping from a tree are a good sign that it’s time, or almost time, to harvest.

Pears, A Book

The Book of Pears
As luck would have it, a beautiful new book, The Book of Pears, by Joan Morgan, arrived in the mail just as pear harvest was beginning (with the variety of Harrow Delight). Replete with old and new illustrations depicting the history of pear cultivation, a large portion of the book offers intimate descriptions and history of many varieties. Beurrée d’Amanlis, for instance, which I grow, originated in a small village in Brittany, but became popular after 1826, when Louis Noisette, a Paris nurseryman, received some fruit from his son, director of the Nantes Botanic Garden.

The book devotes a little space to growing and cooking the fruit. I, of course, immediately looked to see what Ms. Morgan has to say about harvest: “ . . . the next challenge is when to harvest the crop . . . Once they begin to drop from the tree it is time to harvest . . . Experience with your own trees will tell you when to pick.” How true. I’ve grown the variety Magness longest, and usually can pick them to ripen off the tree to perfection. And perfection for Magness means biting into one of the best tasting of all pears.

WINTER’S LEGACY, STILL

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Half a Pear, Tree

   Perhaps last winter’s weather — extended cold, but not frigid temperatures, and hardly any snow — is still playing games with us. Perhaps it is mischief from the early, extended, very warm weather in early spring that was followed by plummeting temperatures and our biggest snowfall (4 inches) of the year. Whatever the reason, some weird things are going on this growing season.Half dead pear tree
    Look at one of my old pear trees, for instance. This tree might be called my “sample” or my “first cut” pear tree. When I hear tell of a pear variety that might be worth growing, I get a scion and graft it onto this tree. The scion bears quickly, in theory, at least, and, if it passes the “first cut,” perhaps it will warrant its own tree. There’s not enough time or space to put every Tom, Dick, and Harry of a pear variety on its own tree.
    The tree now has about a dozen varieties of pear growing off various branches. That’s not weird, though. What is weird is that, right now, the top half of the tree is fully leafed out while limbs on the bottom half of the tree are leafless.
    A disease? Doubtful. A disease killing that much of a tree at once would probably originate in the trunk or roots, in which case the whole tree or only the upper portion would be leafless. And anyway, those leafless limbs are not dead. Cutting beneath the bark reveals living, green tissue.
    My hypothesis — a weak one — is that the cold snap in spring, where temperatures in the ‘teens followed a spate of temperatures in the 70’s, is the culprit. Warm temperatures in late winter and spring cause plants to rapidly awaken and lose the cold-hardiness they maintained through the coldest parts of winter. The pears seemed quite awake when that cold spell struck.
    But why was only the bottom portion of the tree affected? (Here’s the weakness in my hypothesis.) Windless, clear nights, such as during spring’s cold snap, bring a temperature inversion. Under such conditions, denser cold air can settle down near ground level. Even a few feet of elevation can make a difference, one that’s evident when riding a bicycle or motorcycle on a clear summer night on rolling terrain.
    So maybe the bottom half of the pear tree experienced temperatures just below the tipping point where enough damage occurred to delay leafing out.

Other Pear Trees, Still Whole

    No other plants, including other pear trees, experienced this bifurcation. Then again, the “sample” pear is all by itself where the microclimate might be slightly different.
    During that cold snap, the other pears were quite awake, seemingly just about ready to spread their blossoms. I was braced for a total crop loss. Weirdly, the trees went on to blossom just fine and now have what’s shaping up to be a decent load of fruit on them.

Seedling Troubles

    More weirdness: Every season I sow vegetable seeds according to a schedule I’ve developed over the years. I sow the seeds in mini-furrows in flats of potting soil or potting soil topped with a mix of peat moss and perlite. Every season I make my own potting soil from a mix of equal parts peat moss, perlite, compost, and garden soil, with everything sifted together through half-inch mesh hardware cloth.
 Sickly tomato seedlings   And every season I’ve had sturdy, lush green transplants to set out over the past few weeks. Not this season. Too many of the transplants are stunted, with flaccid leaves that are not uniformly lush green. Some have slight, interveinal yellowing of oldest leaves, some have slight reddening of veins, hinting, respectively, at insufficient nitrogen and phosphorus uptake .
    As usual, the weather could be blamed. Those auspicious, sunny days of late winter gave way to a long period of overcast days. Rain or not is not the issue because seedlings were in the greenhouse, watered as needed. Overwatered? Underwatered? Cool greenhouse temperatures could limit root growth, in turn limiting uptake of nutrients even if they are in the soil.
    The potting soil could be the culprit. Although ingredients of my mix are always proportionately the same, the compost isn’t exactly the same from year to year. Same goes for the “garden soil” that goes into the mix. I scrape it up from various places around the yard: the bottom of a finished compost bin, from my catch-all extra soil bin, from top layers of a pond I’m occasionally hand-digging.
    A couple of other gardeners and farmers have concurred with their seedlings’ poor growth this year. Perhaps it was the weather? Do you want to weigh in?

And the Winner Is . . .

    Very few people offered hypotheses on why only one limb of my plum tree was in bloom. Neither the weather nor any other environmental condition was to blame. In fact, I had grafted the tree a few years ago to four different varieties in order to spread out the harvest date and offer a greater variety of plum flavors.Plum, blossoming branch
    The bulk of the tree had already flowered.The one blooming branch was that of beach plum, the least reliable, smallest, and, to my taste, least flavorful of the lot. Perhaps I’ll graft that limb over to yet another variety.
    Congratulations to Tom, tkjazzer@gmail.com, on winning a copy of my book Grow Fruit Naturally.

HOW GREEN, OR NOT, IS MY THUMB?

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Apples a Bust, Pears a Success, Gooseberries a Bust, etc.

Early autumn is a good time for me to find a sunny spot on the terrace with a comfortable chair, pluck a bunch of grapes from the arbor overhead, and ponder the fruits of this year’s labors. And I mean “fruits,” literally: what were my successes, what were my failures, and what do future seasons hold?

In good years, my apples are very, very good; Hudson's Golden Gem here.

In good years, my apples are very, very good; Hudson’s Golden Gem here.

To many people, to too many people, “fruit” means apples, the equivalence having deep roots since pomum is Latin for both apple and fruit. My apple crop this year, whether measured in pounds or number of fruits, is zero. Among my excuses are the wrong rootstock for the site, trees still recovering from last year’s onslaught of 17-year cicada egg-laying, apples’ pest problems making them among the most difficult fruits to grow east of the Rocky Mountains, and my low-lying valley location and surrounding forests further exacerbating pest problems.

Still, the rich flavor of the apples — when I do get some — keeps me trying. Next year I’m replanting with five new trees: Hudson’s Golden Gem, Macoun, Ashmead’s Kernel, Pitmaston Pineapple, and Liberty, all on Geneva 30 rootstocks. This year, I welcomed the time not needed in caring for the trees.

Pears did surprisingly well considering the extensive cicada damage they also endured. But pears always do well, especially the Asian pears. The challenge with European pears is ripening them to perfection. They need to be picked before they are ripe, chilled for a couple of weeks if they are an early maturing variety, then ripened in a cool room. As soon as the first fruits drop, I keep an eye out for a slight change in skin color for those fruits still hanging from branches, then take them if they separate with an easy snap when lifted and twisted from the branch.

Despite being relatively easy to grow, pears are underappreciated as  garden fruit — these days, at least. One-hundred and fifty years ago, you might have perused 70 varieties in a nursery catalog; a hundred years ago, perhaps 30 varieties; in today’s catalogs, I count a dozen or so varieties. Not all my two dozen or so varieties are bearing yet. So far, the best of the lot are the buttery sweet Magness and spicy Seckel.

And More Failures

But let me get back to my failures; get them out of the way. Hardy kiwifruits, both Actinidia arguta and A. kolomikta had uncharacteristically light crops. The same goes for pawpaws, whose branches have, except for this fall, every year been weighted down with a heavy load of fruit, some branches even breaking. It’s most convenient to point my finger at the weather, the winter cold, for barren kiwi vines and pawpaw trees. Not that it was as cold as many past winters, but it did stay cold for longer periods.

The gooseberry crop looked very promising until late June, which is when my chickens discovered them (or remembered where they were). Gooseberries are usually very reliable so I’m optimistic about the future of eating berries from the two dozen or so dessert varieties I grow. I downsized my flock from seven to three chickens (and added two ducks), and plan to erect temporary fencing during the few weeks that the berries ripen in future years.

Big crops presented themselves, as usual, on various mulberry varieties and gumi. Birds swooped in to gobble them up. Last year, with all the cicadas to feed on, birds ignored both these fruits. Geraldi Dwarf mulberry grows only a few feet high so I’ll throw a net over it next year and let birds enjoy the other mulberry varieties, if they so choose.

The Very Sweet Taste of Success(es)

Enough talk about failures. On to successes . . . blueberries, my favorite and most reliable fruit, bore in abundance, as always. Sixteen bushes; about 150 quarts. Mmmmm.

Bagged grapes next to a bunch of grapes that weren't bagged

Bagged grapes next to a bunch of grapes that weren’t bagged

Rain earlier in the season threatened grapes with disease. I enclosed about 75 bunches in white bakery bags, stapled shut, to fend off bees and wasps, diseases, and birds. The crop was in such abundance that harvest has been aplenty even from unbagged bunches. Actually, too “aplenty” from the variety Swenson’s Red, causing individual berries in bunches to ripen unevenly. Next year, I’ll prune more severely, sacrificing total yield while increasing quality and even ripening of fruits that remain.

Once unbagged grapes of a given variety have been harvested and eaten, we move on to the bagged grapes of that variety. Peeling back the white paper has generally revealed bunches that look perfect and taste delectable. Particularly tasty this year have been Glenora Seedless, Somerset Seedless, Mars, Swenson’s White, and Brianna.

Szukis American persimmon ripe on branches

Szukis American persimmon ripe on branches

And finally, another of my no-fail, no-spray, no-prune fruits: American persimmon, specifically the varieties Mohler and Szukis. Mohler has been ripening for about a month, dropping a dozen or so fruits daily, which I pick up from the ground.  My ducks are especially fond of these fruits, and waddle, staring longingly within, around the outside perimeter of the low, temporary fence that keeps them at bay. (They do get to eat fruits that drop beyond the fence.)

Frustrated ducks admiring my persimmons.

Frustrated ducks admiring my persimmons.

The soft fruits taste like dried apricots that have been plumped in water, dipped in honey, and given a dash of spice. Mohler and Szukis are almost totally lacking in the puckery astringency common to many American persimmons. To remove any last traces of astringency, I subject fruits to a treatment used in Japan with Asian persimmons: alcohol. Freshly harvest fruits go into a bowl with a tablespoon of rye (locally made Coppersea Raw Rye), covered, for a day. The alcohol finishes ripening the fruits, keeps fruit flies at bay, and adds a nice punch to the flavor.

Grow Fruit, Many Kinds!

Too many people shy away from growing fruits because they are perceived as too difficult to grow. They can be; or not. Success comes from choosing the right fruits to grow, looking beyond apples, peaches, cherries, and the other usual fare. Success also comes from growing a wide variety fruits. (All this is covered in my newest book, Grow Fruit Naturally.) This year’s apple and gooseberry failures are hardly noticed with the abundance of blueberries, persimmons, and pears. And did I mention European black currants, red currants, and strawberries?

Hormones Get Pumping

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More Brussels Sprouts, Cabbages, & Pears with Hormones

It’s time to get the hormones pumping. No, not by me embarking on some testosterone-fueled, garden-related feat of strength or endurance. Not even my own hormones, but the ones in my plants, more specifically my brussels sprouts plants. And actually, quashing the action of one hormone so that other hormones can come to the fore.

Let me explain: Brussels sprouts are not only a member of the cabbage family but are the same genus and species as cabbage, as are broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and kale. Differences in these plants lie in the way growth of the stems and leaves are expressed. Cabbage has a single stem that’s been telescoped down to very short internodes, resulting in a tight head of overlapping leaves. With kale, internodes along the stem are further apart, allowing each leaf to unfold fully on its own. They also look different from those of cabbage.

In every plant, a shoot bud develops in the upper part of the crotch where a leaf joins a stem. Most brussels sprouts buds each start to develop enough to form a small, cabbage like head. But I — and probably you also — want large brussels sprouts sprouts (and more of them, so I also want tall brussels sprouts plants on which to attach the sprouts).

Pinching makes Brussels Sprouts sprouts bigger

Pinching makes Brussels Sprouts sprouts bigger

The sprouts are retarded somewhat in their development by a hormone called auxin. Auxin is one of many plant hormones coursing about within leaves, fruits, shoots, and roots, their effect dependent on such variables as plant part, plant age, and what other hormones they are reacting with. One place of auxin synthesis is in the tips of stems, and their effect is to suppress growth of buds down along the stem, with more suppression the closer a bud is to the tip of the stem. I just looked at my brussels sprouts plants; yes, the largest sprouts are those nearest ground level. It’s still too early to harvest and too many of the upper sprouts, at present, are too small to be worth picking.

Suppressing auxin production in the tip of the stem releases their hold on the buds — that is, the sprouts — along the stem, so they can grow larger. Suppressing auxin production is simple, requiring only two fingers: Just snap off the tip of the stem. No tip, no auxin production, for a while, at least. The time to do this “operation” is the beginning of September. Done too soon, and a developing sprout might grow so bold as to grow out into, at worst, shoots or, less worse, loose heads. Plus, earlier in the season, I want to keep the stem elongating to provide real estate along which to hang more sprouts.

A Three-Headed Cabbage!

As I wrote, every plant develops buds in its leaf axils, and in every plant growth of those buds is mediated, in part, by auxin. Harvest the main head of broccoli and side shoots start to grow for eventual harvest.

Even tight heads of cabbage have those buds and they also respond to auxin’s influence. I used to plant cabbage in the spring for harvest in summer. Rather than pulling out the spent cabbage plants, as is usually done, I would leave the cut stump with a few bottom leaves for nourishment. Harvesting the cabbage dramatically removes the tip of the stem, which was buried within the head.

Cabbage plants left after harvest develop multiple heads

Cabbage left after harvest = multiple heads

Within a couple of weeks, new sprouts would develop in the crotches where leaves were or had been. In the ideal world, I’d get one to three new cabbage heads from each plant, ready for autumn harvest. A certain amount of art was needed to get it right. Depending on growing conditions and the number of new heads I allowed to develop, they might end up too small or too loose-leaved.

I’ve abandoned that chancy cabbage habit and now do a second sowing of cabbage in early June for a reliable autumn harvest of firm heads.

Pears — More, Please

I fiddled around with hormones earlier this season also, with longer term goals in mind. Auxin keeps the tip of a stem or the upper portions of a plant growing most vigorously. Vigorous growth, though, is at odds with making fruit. After all, both require a lot of a plant’s energy, so the plant has to partition the energy efficiently between growing and fruiting.

Fruiting pear branchPear trees are famous for growing vigorous shoots skyward. Yes, shoot growth is needed on which to hang fruit and for adequate leaves for photosynthesis. But enough is enough. Rather than pinch out shoot tips, which would likely just pass on the vigor to nearby lower buds, I bent ranches down and held them there with string. Changing stem orientation from vertical to at or near horizontal quells auxin production, slows growth, and promotes the formation of fruit buds along the stem. (Fruit buds form the year before flowers open.)

Fruits now dangle from some of the stems that I pulled down a year ago last spring. The response can take more than a year as energy reserves are redistributed within the stem. Response also depends on a tree’s inherent vigor, growing conditions for the season, the pear variety, the degree of stem bending, and other knowns and unknowns. It’s takes a mix of science, art, and experience, and that’s what makes gardening so interesting for me.