Pears, plums and cherries

Pears

Pears are only known as cultivated crops (wild equivalents do not exist). They are closely related to apples, but need more warmth and they root deeper than apple trees. Well-drained, deep, loose soil is required for their cultivation. Pears can be trained very successfully. Some pear varieties have ‘alternating years’: in one year they will yield a far bigger crop than in another year. This applies particularly to older varieties such as ‘Juttepeer’.

There are eating and cooking pears. ‘Supertrévoux’ is an early eating pear (harvest in August), large and juicy with a red bloom. ‘Beurré Hardy’ can be harvested in September, and is rust brown, large, very tasty and has a limited storage life. ‘Bonne Louise d’Avranches’ is ready for picking at the end of September, fairly small, juicy, green with a red bloom, and can also be stored for some time.

Real keeping varieties are ‘Conference’ (slim brown-green fruit; a good self-pollinator) and ‘Doyenné du Comice’ (yellow-brown, very juicy). Good cooking pears are ‘Gieser Wildeman’ and ‘Saint Rémy’ (both go red when cooked). Harvest them in October. Most pears flower in April-May.

Pears as pollinators

Pears also produce the best fruit if different varieties can pollinate one another, but fruit can also be produced through self-pollination. Hover, this is never certain, so always obtain expert advice when making your purchase.

Good combinations are:

Plums

Nearly all plums are excellent self-pollinators. You therefore only need one tree to get fruit. But do get advice when buying plums, since pollination quality varies between varieties.

Plums usually need a lot of space. The trees can get quite large (depending, on the rootstock on which they are grafted). A nice traditional variety is ‘Gele Kroos’, which produces large numbers of flavoursome yellow fruit. ‘Victoria’ is a very well-known variety with purple fruit the size of hen’s eggs. This variety bears so much fruit that the branches often need to be supported to prevent them from snapping.

‘Opal’ provides small, tasty, yellow and purple fruit. This is an early variety: ready for harvesting in July-August. ‘Anna Späth’ is a late variety (ready for picking in October) with violet, fairly large fruit. One variety with a big yield is ‘Czar’ (ripe in August). This has nice fresh tasting purple-blue fruit which look a bit like damsons.

Damsons are the well-known firm, fleshy plums which are used for mixed dried fruit and for baking, amongst other things. They are ready for harvesting in August-September. One good variety is ‘Italian Damson’. ‘Reine Claude Verte’ is the well-known green plum with an unusual taste.

Cherries
There are quite a few groups of cherries, but broadly speaking there are two main groups:

1. sweet cherries and
2. sour or morello cherries.

Sweet cherries can grow into large trees on nutrient-rich soil, although the number of varieties that remain smaller is increasing. And they need cross-pollination. One tree is therefore not enough to produce fruit, unless you opt for a ‘duo tree’, whereby branches of different varieties are grafted onto one rootstock.

Good sweet cherry varieties include ‘Early Rivers’, an early brown cherry (ripe in June) and ‘Schneiders Späte Knorpelkirsche’ (reddish brown, July); ‘Inspecteur Löhnis’ produces dark-red fruit (harvest in July); the ‘Wijnkers’ is also ready for picking in July. It is a tasty dark-brown cherry.

The ‘Meikers’ is very unusual, offering a cross between sweet and sour cherries. Its red fruit can be harvested in June-July and it is a good self-pollinator which is less picky about the soil in which it grows. Sour cherries are excellent self-pollinators. They do not bear fruit on the old wood but on annual shoots and must therefore be pruned vigorously, with the added benefit that the trees remain smaller.

Good varieties are ‘Kelleriis No. 16’ and ‘Morel’. The fruit can be harvested in July-August.