Pears Ahoy!

One secret of ProfessorRoush's garden is that there is an orchard, a decrepit excuse for an orchard anyway, that I'm not very proud of and don't discuss much.  I started it early after we built the house and placed it just below the crest of a south- and east-facing hillside, sloping down to a "draw" in hopes of sparing it from late freezes and the worst winds.   That plan would have worked pretty well, except that this is Kansas and I neglected to plan for the myriad of other threats they would face.  Since establishment, they've faced fire and freeze and drought and deer and what remains today is a pitiful remnant of the original dozen trees planted and a few replacements that followed.  My education in orchard farming has been "fruitless" and nonproductive, and today I have perhaps 3 healthy mature trees, one or two dwarf survivors, and a bunch of always-on-their-last-legs sticks that keep a leaf or two to tease me. 

It's not my fault, I promise.  My pyromaniac neighbors are responsible for the demise of several promising saplings. Despite protection within stone circles of bare earth, several near the boundary fence lines were regularly scorched by the annual prairie burns and simply gave up their efforts to survive.  Rutting deer have killed several by scarring the trunks during antler growth.  Of 4 apple trees, two were lost to fire and, although I have a love for 'Jonathan' apples in pies, the cedar rust here annually consumes my 'Jonathan', preventative spray or none.  The 4th apple tree, a 'Honeycrisp', has never borne fruit and I don't know why.  I've also learned that peaches of any kind are impossible here, the blooms destroyed by frosts every year, bearing any fruit at all only one year in five.  And that 5th year will be the one in which I neglected to spray them for peach leaf curl and worms.  Worst of all, perhaps, I completely underestimated the competition for water and nutrients from the prairie native grass, even when I kept it mowed beneath the trees.  Consequently, I gave up maintenance of the orchard and any spraying routine several years ago.

Imagine my surprise, then when I mowed around the remaining trees last week and found this 19-year-old 'Bartlett' pear (Pyrus communis) was loaded with fruit, the first time ever since it was planted in 2003.  I don't know why it's never had fruit, although I will admit I planted another pear in 2011 that, although it struggles, might have actually just bloomed and cross-pollinated with my 'Bartlett for the first time.   Here they are, regardless, healthy and growing, and completely organic since I haven't sprayed so much as dormant oil here for years. 

I'm going to monitor the heck out of these until harvest now, because I do like an occasional ripe pear, although I'm sure I'm setting myself up for frustration again.   If they survive the Japanese beetles which are munching nearby on the grape vines, and if the raccoons don't come in and eat them all before I realize they're ripe, and if the birds and worms don't ruin them, maybe, just maybe, I might have a tasty bite of pear this year before winter sets in.  Hope springs eternally from a gardener's heart.