Pears

[bookbinder]

We have a couple of pear trees and one of them causes me confusion (many things in life do!!!!) The pears look lovely, quite round in shape, a matte green colour with a slight pink tinge on some....LAst year was the first year in this house so I was delighted to see suich lovely fruit BUT they are sooooooo hard..not able to eat them raw so I cooked them, they took for ever to "fall" unlike the lovely cooking apples that we also have.

Qestion..what are they and what should I do with them?????

[Mo]

What variety are they? Do they ripen after you've stored them?

[Mo]

We have conference trees, we pick the pears in September, put them into the fridge for a while then in the porch, finally bring them in a few at a time for eating in Oct/ Nov.
We have a friend with a commercial orchard, and we were complaining that they were shrivelling instead of ripening, he gave us the tip about putting them in the fridge. In fact we have a spare fridge which, in years with a heavy crop we fill with pears and turn on, the rest of the time it is left slightly open (a pad blutac'd onto the seal) and used to store jam jars, full then empty.
We also have a Packhams (Cheshire variey), and wanted a Williams, but it turned out to be another conference. There are a lot of older varieties but not much sold now.

[Mo]

Wiki article on ripening pears
Pictures of pear varieties. That doesn't look very helpful, There must be more somewhere, can you put a picture of yours on, someone might recognise it

[bookbinder]

Thanks.... will try ripening off the tree, took one of to try and it just withered...so will try the fridge thing as we also have a sort of overflow fridge... they just look as though they should be so lovely to eat...unlike the other tree that we have that look scabby and pathetic and indeed are the most yummy pears!