Fruit - Pear

Pear trees have attractive blossom, and are good shaped trees. They also produce pears!

We have a family pear tree. See Apple for comments on family trees. I delight in different branches of the tree blossoming at different times, then producing different shaped fruit.

Our pear tree is quite old now. Some of the branches were too long, because of poor pruning when we first got it, and it fruited heavily, mostly at the end of those long branches. Eventually one snapped off with the amount of fruit. So I pruned that breanch right back, and pruned the rest of the tree heavily as well, intending to replace the tree if it got upset by this. But it has responded by producing lots of fruit, on a much better shaped tree. It shows that pruning really can work in reenvigorating a tree. But there's always a risk in heavy pruning.

There is a problem with pears. Before they are ripe, they are hard and tasteless (unlike apples, which are at least sour). They are ripe for about a day (or at least, that's what it seems like). Then they go rotten inside, and the taste is "sleepy". Tiresome! This means that you need to have the ripening pears on a windowsill, and try each one, each day, to see if they have softened at all, and then immediately eat them. They may be slightly brown round the core, but you can cut that bit out. Over-ripe pears don't show anything on the outside (unlike apples, which go brown), but get very soft, and rotten inside. On the other hand, a perfectly ripe pear is very nice - juicy and tasty. Our pear tree had a very good harvest this year, and we kept the neighbours fed with pears from it, as well and eating lots ourselves.

I don't have any recipes for pears, as I can't predict when they will be ripe. We eat them raw (cored but not peeled) when they need eating!

Blossom bud