About a decade ago, a pear tree sprouted just outside my garden in a patch near the fence where the meadow owner can’t mow the grass with a tractor so he does not bother with it at all and it is up to me to keep the growth there in check. The tree did have some tiny pears last year, edible, but nothing to write home about. I thus thought the tree wouldn’t be worth anything and I left it to grow in order to fell it for firewood when it is big enough to be worth it, like I always do with trees that sprout near the outside of my fence.
This year the tree was covered in pears, many small, but also many fist-sized. I forgot to take a picture of that, so here is one with my ladder against the tree and some last pears on the topmost branches. I had to take those off with a stick, I could not safely reach them.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The tree was so covered in fruit, that one branch unfortunately snapped under the weight before I got some time to pick it. And the fruit is dee-licious! I do not know what the odds are of getting a good-quality fruit from a pear seedling but I do strongly suspect that they are not in favor. Thus I consider this my lucky pear tree.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
When left to ripen, they become incredibly sweet. Indeed there were many -not in this picture – that were damaged by wasps. But even when still green they are very tasty. This suits me since I do in fact prefer fruits when they are still ever so slightly unripe.
There is no way to eat this many pears before they spoil so we are processing them by cutting them up and putting them in a dehumidifier. We had to buy a second one this year so we could process all the fruit from the garden and mushrooms I brought home from the forest more expediently. We will go into this winter with an overabundance of dried pears, apples, strawberries, raspberries, and prunes. And walnuts. I intend to experiment with making my own bowel-scouring müsli from all of it and also I will try and mix some of the dried fruit in teabags to see if I can manage to make tasty homemade fruit tea.
When I still had access to fruit trees I made fruit leathers with the excess
https://www.freshoffthegrid.com/diy-fruit-leathers/
for example
You are correct in thinking that the odds of getting good tasty pears from a seedling are extremely low, but it does happen from time to time, after all that is how we get new varieties in the first place. It’s also true that a surprising number of older varieties weren’t specifically bred, rather they were found in someone’s garden, and that someone’s name often appears in the variety name, like Bramley Seedling Apple, usually shortened to Bramley Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramley_apple
There is an old Paul Bocuse recipe for pears poached in red wine spice syrup. It’s a good way to prepare some spare pears.
My neighborhood has some city-owned garden plot areas where people can rent small plots for hobby gardening. The city has also planted a number of fruit trees in those areas that are open access to anyone. There’s many pear and plum trees, and the former especially produce a lot of fruit now that they’re getting big.
The downside is that all the pear cultivars present are lacklusters in culinary terms. Even if they were good, harvesting them from high up would be difficult. Most of them just rot on the trees and on the ground, a lot of them infected by that one fungal disease that commonly rots semi-ripe fruits. The plums, which actually taste very good, are also plagued by the same fungus, resulting in huge losses.
I don’t like most of the pear cultivars I’ve tasted, but some are really good if they ripen properly. Even then, they have a minimal storage life compared to apples.
Great tree and great story here! :-D
That’s a lucky tree indeed!