This is most of my bumper crop of Shipova this year. They taste like a good European pear. I think the eating, or at least picking, window is small but we hit it this year.
The picture is the bulk of this year's crop.
Wow, Jafar, congratulations! Beautiful fruit. Glad you got them in the window this year. I checked on mine about a week ago and decided to wait a few more days. I should have picked. Checked again yesterday, and they had liquefied inside the skin!
Crazy how small the window is. Have you processed them before?
If they are just for fresh eating for a few days, my little aronia grafts may be the right size 🙂
You aren’t kidding about the harvest window! I wonder if we should be treating them more like pears and picking when mature rather than ripe. Will have to try that next year if I remember.
We’ve only eaten them fresh. If I get a good quantity some year, I think I might try cutting them in half and cooking into sauce and then run them through the Kitchen Aid to take out the skins and seeds. Juice made in the steam juicer might be good. I’ve made pear juice in the steamer in the past, and it’s delicious. Would probably try a couple cooked before doing a large batch to see if I like the cooked flavor. If I ever buy a table top press, I would definitely press some. I can’t imagine getting enough to bother with the full-sized apple press. They are too small to bother preparing for dehydrating.
Thank for the link. I have never heard of Shipovas. Maybe I can ferment them as an addition to perry?
I must tell people that I grew them for years. They take a long time to produce fruit and they had horrible fungal diseases. Then I grafted them onto aronia, so they would be more precocious, and they got even more fungus. I found the taste to be pleasant, but nothing special. I decided to stop growing them. I don't want to decide that for everyone else, but that is how I feel.
JohN S
PDX OR
I'll admit that much of the appeal is that its a fruit that most people have never heard of but is still very approachable.
My wife liked it better than our Seckel or any of the 3 or 4 varieties of Asian pears we've had so far this year. I didn't explicitly ask about Seuri Li which she liked better than the other Asian pears.
They also have a small window from flavorless to mush, like Yellow Transparent apple, except they are actually nice eating when just right.
I haven't noticed particular fungal problems. Some of the pears right next to it got rust.
John,
I used to live in Socal and tried unsuccessfully to grow apricots and raspberries for ten years. Didn't happen, the raspberries died and the apricot never set fruit, the aprium we had only got one fruit in 8 years(irritating it was really good!). At the same time, peaches, blackberries, bosen berrys, plums, pomegranates, lemons and mandarins were great. If everybody could grow everything there would not be enough space. Here in Philomath, a plum somebody gave us died, but we have about 30 Italian plumbs(freestone 22 brix!). Hey beats working.
Chris