Nafex Southern Pear Interest Group 

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Travis J. Callahan  11403 Wesley Road, Abbeville, LA 70510

337-893-9134   E-mail teejcee@cox.net

 

 

 

United States Department of Agriculture

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Travis J. Callahan

Report from South Louisiana 

 

Today, March 15, 2012

My European pears have fruit set while Hosui and Korean Giant are still dormant. This has never happened before and  very low chill hours are to blame. This was one of the mildest winters I have ever seen. Is everyone else having the same experience?

 

 

 

Carl Mohrherr

Report from Florida

 
I was mowing around the base of my trees today and thought I would note which of these are flowering.  In future years I will keep more detailed records.  I try to always have pears near one another that flower at the same time. Temperature could drop to 25 F tonight.


Feb 11. 2012 Pace, Florida in ZIP 32571
No buds means no emerging flower buds or leaf buds

Asian pears and Olton Broussard.  No buds.
Other pears:
Hoods bloomed in January
Florida Home have bloomed
Joy and tropic sweet apple bloomed early this year.
Two different unknown plum trees bloomed early
Chickasaw plums: some have started to bloom and and others have small buds.
Moonglo-no buds
Unknown sweet pear=no buds
Luella-beginning to bloom
Cajun pineapple=no buds
Orients-no buds
Kieffer=no buds
 Southern Bartlett=large bugs ready to flower
Golden Boy=no buds
Sug=flowers
Court House Sq=buds ready to bloom
Carnes=flowered early
What is probably a pineapple flowered same time as the Carnes
Leconte=no buds
quince=no buds
?Ayer=no buds
Tenns=no buds
At ;least one mulberry has blooms.
Lowquat has set some small fruit.
A nectarine has flowered early also and the others have not yet done so.

Carl Mohrherr

 

Marcus Toole 

Report from Statesboro, GA 

March 31, 2012

 

 I am moving into my parent’s old house in Statesboro Georgia from Canada.  My mom who has Alzheimer’s now lives with my sister and the main reason for the move is to be closer by to help my sister with my mom.  Anyway, I’m taking over the old place and plan to plant some fruit trees.  I have space for three pear trees and am looking for the best .

 

  My lot in Statesboro is fairly small, probably a half acre lot.  We have 350 acres about ten miles away, but that is mostly planted pine.  There is no good way to water anything out there.   In my yard, space wise, I figure that I can cheat a bit.  I’m guessing that standard pears will need to be on 20 to 25 foot centers, eventually, but that’s probably 20 years off. 

There are two very old pear trees in the yard and if I can’t get the two grand old trees to bear fruit again, maybe I can give them a new lease on life by grafting them onto a young tree and then cut the old trees down.  They are so big that this would open up space for about four other fruit trees. Being in the shade probably retarded the fruit production.

 

 

The smaller tree with my house in the background.  Before I started clearing wisteria and oak trees, you could not see my house from this spot due to the jungle.  It is a miracle that these trees survived at all.  They must be made of tough stuff.

 The two big trees bloomed and leafed out about a week and a half before the young trees did.  This growing season is sufficiently odd, and since the young trees are so young and did not bloom, I’m guessing that it is too soon to say that these two trees are early blooming varieties.  Later I plan to send you photos of mature fruit, if the squirrels let me get some.  

My new pear trees

 

This photo is of Tenn’s in the foreground and Sug in the background.  Of the three trees I bought, Tenn’s was the smallest and is growing the slowest, but just the same it is doing very well.  Sug is growing the fastest of the three.

This is the Southern Bartlett Pear which I bought from Just Fruits and Exotics.  This was the first year they were available on a very limited basis.  I think I remember the guy at the nursery saying that my tree was the very first one shipped to Georgia.  So far it looks great and is growing like a weed.

 

 

 

Welcome New Member Larry Stephenson

  Carrollton, Mississippi  

July 8, 2011 Report from Ed Abshire, Abbeville, LA

 

Ed Abshire is a long time friend of mine and his orchard is 46 years old. All of his trees are very large and the load the trees are carrying at this time is very hard to believe.

The Baldwin Pear does very well in this area.

Opposite side of the Baldwin.

 

 

Editors Note: Louisiana Beauty  looks and tastes very much like Leona.

The Beautiful Tenn. Pear grafted ten years ago with wood from Ethan Natelson

 

 

 

Editors Note: This one sure looks like Orient to me, but others think they are different. I grew them side by side several years ago.

 

July 8, 2011  Report From  Carl Mohrherr , Pace, FL

 

Last winter was very cold and did not seem to hurt the pears.  Only addition was that Chuck up in Iowa gave me Seckel wood and I have grafted three trees. 

I heavily fertilized this year which I had not done before.  I think when there is blight the susceptible trees will get ill and the more resistant will get it and recover.  My dwarf Kieffer and dwarf Orient have gotten it and have recovered.  My Hood do not seem to have caught it.  This year for the first time I used a lot of wood ash and N:P:P fertilizer.  Fruit yield has been very heavy on most of the American varieties.  The Kieffers did not fruit as much as they had done previously with branch breaking loads, but are still doing ok.  The Asian pears are not putting out as heavily as they did last year, but still have abundant pears.

The Hood and Floridahome are currently my two early pears.  The hoods have put out a lot of foliage, and this year for a change put out some fruit.

Photo 1. The above tree, a hood, is putting out significant fruit for the first time.  It is next to a Loquat.  Most of the pears are on one part of the tree.  The tree was supposed to be a Baldwin .

Photo2. Dwarf orient in foreground and older hood loaded down with fruit that I am now picking.  I would like to also get an Ubileen for another early pear type.

Photo3.  Mystery pear after about ten years in the shade is yielding after fertilizer application and removing some of the shade.  It was labeled as a Bartlett .

 

 

 

 

 

 

First yield for this Tenn. tree. Most fruit is on a single branch.

 

First time yield for another Tenn. pear tree

 Propped fruit laden Golden Boy.  Tree has never been ill.

Propped fruit laden Sug pear.  Tree has never been ill and has not grown very much likely to the huge yields that it has each year.

Fruit laden branch of another Cajun PineApple

 

Propped fruit laden Court House Pear that lost its top to fireblight with Hosui in background that was also hit hard by fireblight 

 

June 26, 2011  report from Travis Callahan, Abbeville, LA

2011 is indeed another heavy production year for pears here in South Louisiana. Our winter was a lot different than usual in that we had over 30 frosty mornings, but no days colder than 27 degrees. The temperatures were very stable in the fact that they slowly went up and down rather than the abrupt changes that cause the citrus trees damage in most winters.

In my son's pear orchard a few miles from my yard, branches are threatening to break from the sheer load on these very mature trees planted in 1992. 

Here in my small orchard all the trees are sporting large crops especially the pears. My two pear trees have six different cultivars on each . The rainfall since January of this year has been very sparse. In the first five months of this year we only had 9 inches of rainfall. So far in June we have had seven inches . Our normal rainfall for the first six months of the average year is 33 inches leaving us at half of the normal. Here are a few pictures of the pears on my two trees as of today.

 

 

 

 

 

 Please send me any grower's reports so I can add them to the web page..

Travis

 

 

   August 29, 2010 Report From  Carl Mohrherr <cmohrherr@uwf.edu>

I have much to learn, but can certainly report on what I have observed relative to harvest, disease, and growth.  I am located on 8.3 acres on a hill side that is about 90 ft +/-20 feet above sea level about 3-4 miles from Escambia Bay in NWFL in Pace, FL.  The soil is very poor, little topsoil & acidic with a clay orange hardpan about 18-24 inches below the surface.  The area was originally a planted pine forest with mature trees that I am gradually taking down.  I have learned how to safety burn pine in my stove and pine will used for fuel.  We do get cold days here and are USDA zone 8b.   Last winter the temp dropped to 22F on the coldest nights.  Was very hard on my cold resistant citrus.  Summer is hot and humid.  We are having exceptionally heavy rain this year.  The annual average is about 60 inches and I am sure we are way ahead this year.

No fire blight this year but there was last year and the year before that.  I have varied rootstocks, but have noted that at least some dwarfed varieties are not any more susceptible to fire blight than grafts on Calleryana rootstock.   There was an internet posting by Joe Real explaining this which I will not do.  I say learn both by observation and also listen to your elders, but experience is the ultimate proof.  The dwarf forms seem to yield in fewer years.  The only rootstocks that I am sure are Calleryana are those I made to flowering pears and reasonably sure of those that I purchased from just fruits and exotics.
So far three hood trees on non-dwarfing root stocks are my biggest trees.  One of these was supposed to be a Baldwin and the other a Seckel.  I am looking for Seckel grafting wood.  Hood pear yield is very low, but appears to go up with an equally early pollinator. Hoods initiate blooming at the end of December to the middle of January and continue bloom for several months.  Florida home and the Carnes apple pear are almost as early.  The Hood pears have been the easiest to ripen and can be picked beginning of July..  I like the taste of the hood pear.  To date consistently it is my best tasting pear.

The most productive trees have been the Kieffer trees with fruit laden branches breaking.  I only purchased one tree labeled as Kieffer and ended up with 5 others.  I now have 4 trees.  Only the dwarf tree is mature and I do not know how big the others will grow.  Currently I am giving these away, but in the future l will learn how to dry, ferment, and can them.  

I have two dwarfed orient pears that have yielded reasonably well whereas the one tree that is not dwarfed is yielding very little, likely due to being shaded.  It was also partially leaned over by a hurricane.  This year I am clearing bush from around it and I will see what it does next year when it gets more sunlight.  Orient pears can be ripened and become extremely sweet, but spoil rapidly there after.  Some of the orient pears appear identical in shape to the two pears that I have this year on a Cajun pineapple pear.  The two Cajun pineapples appear exactly identical to the pictures that Travis has posted.

I have a Carnes apple pear with pears for the first time, but the animals got them before I did this year.  There were a few dozen pears for the first time on an Olton Broussard the year.  To me it has the texture of an apple and looks like an off-color green apple, but the flesh seems whiter and there is a difference in taste.  Even not fully ripe they are not bad.  I have several other trees that are so grafted and this should should prove to be one of my better pears since I like sweet crunchy fruit.  The taste  and skin coloration is very close to a Chinese pear.  I would say Olton Broussard is a Chinese pear.

The Southern Bartlett are proving to be good trees yielding very large pears.  It appears that I have to learn more about how to ripen them.  The two trees seem to not be very thick having a more spreading aspect in growth.   Seem to be very resistant to fire blight.  I have started two more.  
I have several other pears varieties that are just beginning to yield.  I have what may be a pineapple pear, but the critters got the fruit this year.  It is growing well even though it is partially shaded.  I also have a Leconte and a quince.  They are not growing very and fast it appears I need to cut down some shading trees.  I have the three "just fruits and exotics" pears (yellow boy, sug, and courthouse).  I have not fully tested the fruit for eating, but they definitely will thrive in my climate.  The courthouse was really hit hard fire blight two years ago.  Several of my Asian pears had fruit, but most of it got eaten by the critters.  I did try some of the Hosui, but there were somewhat tasteless.   While waiting for them to get ripper the critters ate them.  The most successful Asian pears that I still have is a pear shape formed that is Chinese that I mentioned previously.  The few that I have tasted are something like the Olton Broussard.  I have if the labels are correct two Chinese varieties.  One was susceptible to fire blight and the other was not.  But I will not give the specific varieties since there is a question about the labeling.  The producing tree is somewhat shaded and I will remove some of the shading trees. 

I have several Tennessee pear trees that growing well.  No blooms yet and of course no fruit.  I had one Leona grafted tree.  It has not grown, so this winter I grafted onto a flowering pear and when I went by today it had sent a shoot about 10 ft in the air.   I have some other diverse pears that are currently very small that include one Ayer. 

I notice that many of the pears that get attacked end up with wasps feeding on them.  I have gotten stung when picking pears.

Carl Mohrherr 

<cmohrherr@uwf.edu>

Report From Travis Callahan

Abbeville , LA

Zone 8B/9

I have harvested pears this year  from all six varieties grafted on my two Bradford Pear trees . The crop was very large considering that the trees are only in their fourth year. I had to thin a lot of fruit from the trees on several occasions to avoid breaking limbs.

Travis

 

 

 

 

Questions and Answers

 

Travis:

Question

I wonder if any of the readers have observed the following:

I wonder if I a problem I have been having from stinkbugs occurs for other growers.  For years I have observed in the early spring that stinkbugs will attack the young pears when they are the size of wild blue berry to the size of a commercial blue berry.  These are sucking insects as are all bugs and their attack leaves what is initially a deep wound that appears as a bite.  This leaves at the minimum scaring or worst.  Spraying does not seem to be a good option since there are also often still blossoms on these trees and I do not want to poison pollinators.  My thought has been to buy a can of WD-40 and directly spray these horrible pests when I see them.  Fine solvents generally upon contact will kill most insects since their waxy epicuticles and breathing are sucesptible to solvents.  I will just purchased a fresh can of WD40 and will try it shortly.
I have also noticed that wasps also often will eat large cavities into pears as they start to ripen.  The squirrels and birds are the other common agents of attacks on pears.  The raccoons and possums seem not to bother pears.  fortunately I have had not problems yet from wild pigs or deer.  I would appreciate any advice or observations.

Carl Mohrherr

Answer:

Hello Carl,

I assume that you are referring to the Leaf Footed Bug. This is a fairly large brown bug with a white band from side to side on the back. This thing once destroyed a fairly large crop of my citrus where they ruined individual slices of oranges making them unusable. This is also a big problem in the Macadamia groves.

Tomato growers here in zone 9 are plagued by   the Leaf Footed Bug to the point that many have stopped trying to grow tomatoes in this area. I have seen the bug on every fruit and most vegetables.

Here is a picture of several bugs including the leaf footed bug.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/93

I get total control of these things with this product, which is approved for all kinds of uses and is the safest thing I have found. You have to get the spray on the bugs which is not very hard to do since they usually clump up together. I assure you that this will make them hard to find after one spray.

http://www.bugsource.com/permethrin_10_.html

Travis

See My Pear Gallery at the end of the page.

Please send your pictures of pears you have definitely identified.

 

 Report from Carl Mohrherr

April 2010 Pace, FL
 I am an amateur without a lot of time to spend on my trees. Located on the side of a hill on poor soil, zone 8b, and with 60 inches of rain per year, if a tree is not rugged it will not make it on my place.   Last year was not an especially good year since there was a lot of cold weather mixed with warm periods in my location in extreme northwest Florida.  I am somewhat close to the Gulf of Mexico with my place being a few miles from Escambia Bay.  I am 80 to 110 feet above sea level due to the hills that we have.  Last year there was a bit of disease that killed better than half of my grafts and fruit yield was also low.   I hope it does not appear this year.  This year while we had a lot of cold, it stayed cold, which is better for pears and not so good for citrus.

 This winter, while being colder overall than normal, did not have the intervening warm periods as occurred last year. There are a lot of carpenter's bees and honey bees around this year.   To date there has been very good fruit set overall.  I have finally had flowers on one Olton Broussard and on one of the special pine apple pears that I grafted from the grafting wood I received from Travis.   No flowers on my Tenns (Tennessee) yet even though one of the trees is of reasonable size.  Apparently my two recent grafts are growing that came from a Korean giant that I purchased last year potentially giving me a total of three Korean Giant pear trees.  My Luella is in the shade and has not done much.  I have grafted it to a flowering pear with not so many other trees shading it out and hopefully someday I will get to taste a Luella.  I need to get busy with chain saw and take down some more pines trees & brush to alleviate my shading problem. 

I think the Southern Bartlett is my best pear tree overall (I have two young ones that are yielding pears and have started three more).  S. Bartlett trees yield early, so far are very disease resistant, the trees grow well and are spreading which I like better than the typical very cylindrical tall patterns of most pear trees.  In hurricane prone areas encourage your trees to grow low and prior to a storm top them or they will be blown down.   I see that the Southern Bartlett is available in the Houston area and soon it is likely that the nursery "Just Fruits and Exotics" may have it available for internet and local sale in Tallahassee since I did give them some grafting wood.  My Joy heirloom apple from them is doing well (While self fertile I have a tropic sweet next to it and both are near my septic tank field).  They specialize in offering heirloom fruit cultivars that they have encountered growing at old homesteads.    I have their Sug, Courthouse Square, and Yellow Boy.  The Courthouse got yapped from fire bright two years ago, but this year seems to have recovered growing out beneath the main stem that was killed.  Currently most of my Asian pears have just begun blooming for the first time.   The Hosui (blooming) and what is probably a Tse Li pear (Previously I likely misidentified this as a Ya Li, that is doing well) are trying to recover from fire blight from previous years.  Overall the Asian pears have grown less than the other pears with Ya Li doing the best and it will do better since I have removed some nearby brush..
My big problem has been the early bloomers labeled as sugar pear, Baldwin, and Hood (I know for sure it is a Hood) grow fast, bloom very early, and yield little in the way of pears.  I am grafting Florida Home pears now near to these in hopes of providing an early cross-pollinator.  I have gotten a few pears from the hood (planted in '95) that mature about the first of July and that has gone up since my Floridahome has started blooming nearby.  I have other early bloomers, but they are not big enough to make a judgment about such as a Carnes (apple pear) and what is supposed to be pineapple pear.  These two are within 50 feet of one another and cross pollination is assured and both are shaded by pine trees and brush that I will remove.  I am thinking someday of getting a beehive to help with my pollination problem.

That is all for now.  

Carl Mohrherr

 

Report from Drew Demler

 

3-27-10

Movin’ On

Well after several years of growing fruit in Central Texas it is time to start over again.  Due to several reasons my small retail nursery closed down this year and I have now taken a job in my home town of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  I will now be in a much more similar climate to Travis and Dr. Natelson.  It is hard to leave my trees in Texas which were just getting to real maturity and producing heavy crops but it is exiting to be able to start over and try some different things as well. The South Louisiana climate and area will be very different than my Texas home.  The soil will be different, I will have fewer chill hours on average and I expect more disease issues.  I am excited to be in an area that has good rainfall and more fertile soil than Austin’s bad rocky dirt and droughty summers.  Before I moved I took cuttings of all my favorite varieties and I will re-graft those this spring.  I also had a few grafted trees that I took along with me that I will plant as soon as I get into a permanent home over here (hopefully not long). 

 

In the future I plan to trial different rootstocks and hopefully find some new local varieties of pear to try.  I will try some different techniques of training also and maybe even try my hand at espalier.  Mostly I plan to learn as much as I can about growing pears in this new area.

 

 

Drew Demler

wildscaper@hotmail.com

 

This winter (2008-9) in Pace, Florida (between Pensacola and Escambia Bay) was hard on the early blooming fruits and also on the citrus.  We did reach 22 F which is cold for us here.  My low chill Hood, Seckel, Carnes, Baldwin, and sug had flowers on them in January, in fact the hood started in the last part of December.  The flowers more or less survived, but for some reason not much fruit gets set on these early trees.  My guess is that the low temperatures slow down the pollinating insects.  Also these are located so that none of the nearby pears are in flower that early and I think that the pears are not getting pollinated.  A florida home tree  planted near the hood has started blooming and now the hood (it is about 15 yrs old) is bearing some fruit but is nowhere near what could be considered as highly productive.  I have grafted some early flowering cultivars on these early bloomers in the hope of insuring pollination. 

My two southern bartletts that yielded fruit for the first time last year have bloomed and now also the later pears are blooming like orients and kieffers.  The southern bartletts were started from graft material as were the tenns, Luella, olton Broussard, and a special pineapple from Travis.  I like the southern bartletts and have grafted a couple more.  I have not yet got anything off the other grafted pears yet except the first year where one of the tenns grafts yielded a pear that was really good.  The hosui is still alive after a couple of bouts with fireblight and I can see it is not a good choice for my area because of the lack of disease resistance.  I am planting a Korean giant that is said to be disease resistant.. 

That is all that I have to say for now.

 

Carl Mohrherr

Pace Florida in Woodbine Hills

 

Report from Abbeville, LA  

January, 10, 2011

 

Since I moved five years ago to a smaller and higher property, I no longer have the beautiful orchard that I had for the previous 20 years. The young man who purchased the place promised that I could harvest scion wood any time that I wanted to do so. Just before the sale I collected graft wood from my favorite six pear trees and purchased two well branched young Bradford Pears and grafted the six varieties on each of the  trees.  All grafts were successful and the trees have grown quickly. I harvested   some of all six varieties of pear  last year.

  I drove past the old place  three months after the sale and to my horror the young man had removed every pear tree (13) all the Mayhaw (12) all the grapes and Muscadine vines and nearly every other thing on the property. Diana’s beautiful flower beds and flowering shrubs are gone as well as the flag pole.

 

A few days later I learned that the young man had died of a drug overdose. He was 22 years old.

 

My favorite pears

 

 

Leona Pear (my best pear)

 

 

The Southern Bartlett Pear

 

 

 

Southern Bartlett trees sometimes have three distinct shapes. This shape is why our friend Larry Brown named the unknown the Southern Bartlett.  

The Olton Broussard Pear

Several years ago as I searched for the best local pears in South Louisiana , I was told about about Mr. Olton Broussard who was growing an especially good pear south of the town of Delcambre, LA. Mr. Broussard had at one time owned a fruit tree sales outlet locally. He had no idea as to the variety of the pear which he had gotten as part of a shipment from a fruit nursery in Mineral Wells, Texas and the tree tag only had the words Oriental Pear.

I managed to meet with Mr. Broussard and procure graft wood in 1991. In 1992 I grafted some trees for my son's farm and I harvested these today ( August 27, 2011) from one of those trees. Generally this pear is considerably smaller averaging about 0.50 pounds. We are in a very good pear harvest period and most of the varieties are larger than usual.

I have kept some of this variety in the chiller drawer of the fridge for more than three months so it is the best keeper that I know of. The pear is best when the color goes from light green to bright yellow which is a little riper than the pear in the lower left in the picture below. They never truly soften but the sugar content and juice increases if it is left on the tree for a little longer. Because of shelf life and the crispness of the fruit it has to be an Asian pear variety . The deep calyx end is a characteristic of the pear. Perhaps someone knows of a fruit tree nursery in Mineral Wells, Texas and we may one day solve the mystery of the identity.  

 

 

Diana holds an Olton Broussard Pear that is over a pound.

 

 

The Olton Broussard Pear has a very deep calyx end

 

One branch of the Orient Pear at my former property and destroyed by the buyer.

 

 

The Cajun Pineapple (sure looks and tastes like the Orient)

I did manage to salvage a graft or two from my former orchard.

 

 

Orient/Cajun Pineapple is big too

 

 

The Hosui Pear

 

 

 

  Travis

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