I have a dwarf Colette pear which I have trained as an espalier on the back fence of my garden. It is doing great. It already has 5 tiers, about 1 for every year it has been in. This was my 3rd attempt after the first two pear varieties had trouble with fire blight. I searched far and wide to find a dwarf Potomac (also fb resistant) as a polinator, but this is still a young tree and didn't bloom this year. The Colette had a very nice bloom after frost this spring. I didn't expect fruit, but it set big time. This wasn't due to it being everbearing, though. I discoverd my neighbor has a Bradford pear (common landscaping tree that blooms in the spring) and that apparently cross-polinated the colette. I didn't get any secondary blooms, possibly due to the heavy fruit set from the first blooms and maybe because it is still a young tree. Now the fruit is starting to turn yellow. Really unsure when to start picking the pears. Can anyone suggest a good way to determine when the pears should be picked? p.s. My dwarf colette was from Miller. It is a fairly robust grower, so the root stock is not extremely dwarfing. My yard orchard is all dwarf trees, and I typically pay attention to the root stock, but in this case I bought it on sale to replace a tree, and it is working out as the espalier thus far.

Thanks, ClarkinKS. The blooms are sweetly fragrant and remind me of almond or mayflowers (do they have mayflowers in KS?). I just took some blurry pics with my phone (sans flash), but you may be able to see what I mean. The parent pear trees up the hill are perhaps around 10-14 ft tall and perhaps 12 ft wide. They have been there a while and might have been "dwarf" type or grafted somethings. One year the fellow (now gone) brought me a bushel of hard winter pears from (IIRC) one of those trees or perhaps these are different trees. I'm not that picky ;) I've canned spiced crab apples from quarter-sized crab apples from someone's yard (with permission we picked them). Sugar, cinnamon, vinegar, clove, ... they look just amber-gorgeous in a pint sized jar with the sunlight shining through the bottle. Maybe if I get any pears I can can them -- unless it takes 25 years to get pears, by which time I will have moved and or be composted alongside the peach and apple volunteers. Let's see if the photo uploading works. Thanks for your response. BTW, a stinky smelling pear flower? Really? Like some of those viburnums in a swampy area that reek like a pig's whatever? oooggg. How do I post more than a single image?

Here in Zone 5-6 (Western Montana) I ripened Anjou, Gold Spice, and one I'm not sure of because I lost the graft label, probably Flemish Beauty. Had Ure coming when I picked it early. Other grafts on my tree that have yet to produce are Clapp's Favorite, Dana's Hovey, White Doyenne, Seckel, and Winter Nellis, as well as local favorite "Frost" and a family heirloom from Lou Pezzuti, which we named for his father Joe. Joe originally saved scions from a tree that was getting bulldozed (I suspect a seedling). A neighbor has some beautiful Boscs. The original tree is Gold Spice on FHx333, I believe, and has been a reliable producer every year, including the year it was planted; one year I had no pollination, but that is another story. The tree is kept at 12 feet tall and about 8 feet diameter by pruning. Some grafts do appear more vigorous than others and I prune them more aggressively. And I grafted Flemish Beauty to a Bartlett on unknown rootstock and it overgrew badly- it's been a wrestling match ever since to keep it hewn to a manageable level and I haven't full succeeded in controlling it (not my tree, so I can't obsess over it as much as I might.) Just FWIW, M

Yep, it's a "P" month. Pears, Pumpkins, and Pies! sing it....... Pears and pumpkins and pies, Oh my! Pears and pumpkins and pies, Oh my! Pears and pumpkins and pies, Oh my! OK, so classic movies have been on TV, what can I say? :+) Deanna