Pears


We grow about 1 acre of pear trees in small plantings around our home farm. We have planted over 12 cultivars, looking for good tasting fresh market pears. We start in August with Harrow Delight and harvest different cultivars each week until late September.

We grow the traditional Bartlett, Bosc and our personal favourite, Flemish Beauty pears, knowing our customers like their flavour and appearance. But fireblight disease is a major risk with these cultivars, as trees will die within days of infection by this bacteria. So we appreciate the tolerance to fireblight that has been bred into new cultivars developed at the Harrow Research Centre. We grow three cultivars that have been named from this program: Harrow Delight, Harvest Queen and Harrow Sweet. We also like HW610 and HW614 which will soon be named. We had our first fruit from HW616, a summer pear with good eating quality, and expect it to be named soon as well. Most of the Harrow cultivars have firm fruit, with smooth flesh and buttery flavour - very different from traditional pears, but very good.

Pear trees are notoriously slow to come into production - the old saying is "Plant pears for your heirs". So we nudge trees into producing with tree support through stakes or trellis, use of dwarfing Quince or Old Home Farmingdale rootstock, and training branches to the horizontal. Cultivars like Harrow Sweet are producing fruit in their 2nd or 3rd year this way.

We harvest our pears in firm condition to prevent soft cores. Pears of the later cultivars should be held in cool storage for up to 4-6 weeks, and brought into room temperature to after-ripen.


For more information on pears:

See our Recipe File
Foodland Ontario Produce Facts - Pears
British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Food pear page

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