best tasting pear poll

[genovise]

Hi all, I decided to create a poll on all the available pear trees that i know are available. To aid people when making choices about what pear tree to buy.

[genovise]

Feel free to put why you recommend your chosen variety and please put if you find that you are having any issues in your particular area growing your chosen variety.

[FB.]

None of the above, but of the above list, I'd choose Williams - or at least the taste of the Williams pears grown in my conditions.

In my soil and climate (mild and dry, with infertile shallow soil): Doyenne D'Ete on a pear rootstock produces fruits of outstanding flavour; the finest (and earliest) pears I have ever encountered. It's also a heavy cropper, crops very early in life, and will bear a regular crop of large quantities of pest and disease-free, golf-ball-sized fruits, on both spurs and tips.
Shelf life is just a few days (perhaps a week at most) before the fruit turns into the texture of coarsely-mashed potato with a fermented taste.

Note that I emphasise a mild and fairly dry climate as that's where pears are at their best.

Unless the growing conditions are good; Quince rootstocks produce fruit of a lower quality than pear-derived rootstocks such as Pyrus, Pyrodwarf, wild pear or pear seedling.

[Garden_Chris]

pear tree recommmendations

I've heard tell that Comice is widely regarded as the finest flavored pear, yet does not have the reliability of, for example, conference. As with everything though, personal opinion and taste hold a great swing on preference - so this certainly isn't definitively the case.

My only understanding of pears comes from my granddads Conference pear on Quince A in his back garden. It always tasted (and still does taste) fantastic - although there's undoubtedly a large degree of sentimentality associated with that taste.

I have recently purchased (from the indirect advice of one Stephen Hayes in one of his videos) a Concorde Pear tree on Quince C rootstock. Apparently it keeps the taste of Comice, yet the reliability of Conference is there too (they're it parents). It's being delivered in November, and the first pears will arrive in two years time - perhaps I'll be of more help then? Sorry!

However, FB.'s opinion always holds great sway with my opinions - he seems an inexhaustible treasure trove of reliable information and whether naive or not, I certainly place great importance upon his opinions and advice. He will most certainly have a far greater understanding of what influences the taste, growth, etc of pears.

So, sadly, I can't honestly state which I would recommend through personal experience, yet I've purchased a Concorde based upon others experience with its taste and reliability. Honestly though, a large part of me wants to buy a Comice as much as a part of me wants to buy a Cox's Orange Pippin - just to see what the fuss is about!

I'm more confused at the end of this post than I was at the start!

[VirginVegGrower]

Williams BC for me, although DdC is popular with me too. I can't stand Conference.

[genovise]

I bought a conference pear tree on rootstock quince A which is a standard sized tree last year. It fruited for the first time this year and it had 3 big pears on it.

I was waiting with anticipation to actually harvest the fruit. However all the anticipation was in vain as all 3 pears withered and died and rotted on me before i could get them of the tree talk about gutted.

[genovise]

I would have liked a concorde pear tree Garden Chris but it does nothing but rain here in Greater Manchester so i think pear scab and fire blight would be a big problem for me.

I would have loved to have a williams pear tree FB and Virginveggrower but i didn't want to take the risk of relying on the next door neighbors pear tree to pollinate it.

A year on from buying the conference pear tree it seems i made the right choice as my next door neighbour has chopped their pear tree down now.

[VirginVegGrower]

Oops! Pears do grow large and you've got to have a fair sized garden to grow them unless you espalier in some way. Shame you can't have two. The WBC is a beautiful flavour.

[FB.]

I would have liked a concorde pear tree Garden Chris but it does nothing but rain here in Greater Manchester so i think pear scab and fire blight would be a big problem for me.

I would have loved to have a williams pear tree FB and Virginveggrower but i didn't want to take the risk of relying on the next door neighbors pear tree to pollinate it.

I'd be surprised if fireblight was a problem in the NorthWest - I would have thought that it was usually too cold for fireblight. But perhaps not.......who suggested being wary of fireblight in the NorthWest?

I find Concorde to have better disease resistance than Conference (which seems to suffer a bit from scab in wet years).
Pears prefer a warm, sunny, sheltered climate. They are less hapy in cool, dull or wet climates.
Not all fruits grow well in all areas. Plums thrive in your climate but I can't grow them (not enough rain), whereas pears may not thrive in your climate (too wet and cold).

The rotten pears you mention on your Conference could be because of scab causing the fruits to split and allowing fruit-rotting fungi to get in.

[FB.]

Oops! Pears do grow large and you've got to have a fair sized garden to grow them unless you espalier in some way. Shame you can't have two. The WBC is a beautiful flavour.

Quince rootstocks need lots of rain. I don't get much of that here, with the result that my ten-year-old pears on Quince A are only about 4-5ft in size.
I have some younger pears on Pyrus and Pyrodwarf that are already bigger and stronger than the Quince-rooted trees of twice their age and without needing the irrigation/feeding that Quince rootstock does.
My slightly alkaline soil also doesn't help; Quince isn't entriely happy, but pear rootstocks will cope very well with alkaline soil.

[yummersetter]

I've only had a handful of pears this year, and they were pinched by birds or squirrels before they were ripe. I've got 2 Concorde trees which are usually huge croppers of perfectly OK fruit. I planted Gourmande about ten years ago but haven't had any pears from it yet, it hardly grows and has a lot of disease. My Comice tree isn't in a great location and only gives me a couple of dozen pears in a normal year. They're tricky to judge when to pick, how to store and when to eat them but if you get it right there's no finer fruit.

[VirginVegGrower]

Quince rootstocks need lots of rain. I don't get much of that here, with the result that my ten-year-old pears on Quince A are only about 4-5ft in size.
I have some younger pears on Pyrus and Pyrodwarf that are already bigger and stronger than the Quince-rooted trees of twice their age and without needing the irrigation/feeding that Quince rootstock does.
My slightly alkaline soil also doesn't help; Quince isn't entriely happy, but pear rootstocks will cope very well with alkaline soil.

Rain is something we have in abundance FB

[FB.]

Rain is something we have in abundance FB

The trouble is: Quince likes lots of rain as they have relatively weak and shallow roots, but pears don't like heavy rain - and pears have deep and vigorous roots.
Grafting the two together is a bit of a mis-match. In fact, a number of pears don't grow well when grafted on quince because the two species are only just compatible.
It's this poor compatibility that literally starves the pear grafted onto the quince - and stress then increases fruitfulness (although the partial incompatibility between pear and quince will also impair fruit quality due to poor sapflow).