Pears

The biggest, Sep 2018

Again, I have a very meager pear harvest.  I picked off all immature fruits from the tiny Kumoi pear tree this spring (as I should have done the first spring after planting given it's still shorter than me three years on).  It's grown a bit this summer--finally.  Still shorter than me, though.

I also have a very vigorous, very spiky native flowering pear which still hasn't condescended to flower yet (about five years old).  In August I attempted to bud graft it with buds from a pear tree growing at our local country park.  I had a look last week and it looks like two of my attempts failed, but I'm not sure about the other two.  Maybe.

And then there's the Williams pear tree, which has grown strongly and flowered profusely for a few years now, but still has only managed to produce a couple pears for me.  I think there were three pears last year--all small, too.  This year, one good sized one (unripe) got blown off in high winds and bruised.  I cooked it the next day (pear streusel tart, courtesy of The Joy of Cooking), since I knew it wouldn't ripen after being damaged.  Two days later the tree itself blew down:  completely snapped at the trunk below the graft.

Defeated, Sep 2018

Luckily the tree only landed on a bit of chicken wire and no other damage was done.  The son and I picked the remaining five or six pears, most of them quite small, none of them ripe. 

I will attempt to graft a few of the shoots back onto the rootstock, but I'm not confident;  I'm very new at grafting and am relying on books and youtube.  I fear this is the end for Williams.

A few more fruits, Sep 2018