Garden pear in Central Russia

One of the representatives of the Rosaceae family is a pear. This fruit tree in the wild is distributed throughout the continent of Eurasia from the southernmost territories to 55-60 ° north latitude. The ancient Greeks began to grow a pear as a garden plant in Europe. In Russia, Josef Gertner, professor of botany and director of the Botanical Garden of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, began breeding work to improve the taste of fruits and increase the frost resistance of pears in the 18th century. This article will discuss modern varieties of this fruit tree that have worked well in Central Russia.

How to choose the most, most ...

Today, there are thousands of varieties of pears. From this variety, I want to choose the best, one that will delight the whole family with beauty and delicious fruits. What are the characteristics of choosing a pear for your garden? First of all, by the method of application - they want to plant a decorative or fruit tree on their site.

Decorative pears

Our gardens and personal plots are rarely decorated with decorative pears, although these trees look very impressive and are successfully used in landscape design of parks in Central Russia. An example of such decorative trees is the pear loosestrife.

Pear loosestrife

This ornamental tree, up to six meters high, stands out against the background of other greenery with a spherical crown with drooping branches covered with silvery narrow leaves. In April-May, she looks especially elegant in a white flowering outfit. Her fruits are small, green. They are not eaten. The tree is unpretentious, can grow even on sandy soil or in urban conditions not very favorable for plants, loves a lot of light, easily survives drought, but does not tolerate stagnation of water.

Pear loosestrife on a photo

Garden pear

Fruit trees of this species in Central Russia grow less often than apple trees. Pears tolerate lower temperatures worse, but varieties with increased winter hardiness and early ripening allow harvesting in conditions of not very long summers and harsh winters.

What varieties of pears are not afraid of frost

Information on the frost resistance of most varieties of pears in their descriptions is expressed in one word - high. Even less about what frosts a tree can carry without damage are messages: "at the level of old Russian pear varieties" or "at the level of Bessemninka variety". For gardeners: Pear trees of old Russian varieties and Bessemyanka, in particular, withstand frost up to -38 ° C, their flower buds - up to -34 ° C, and the ovary - up to -2 ° C. When testing pear varieties for inclusion in the state register, these indicators serve as a standard. The list below includes modern pear varieties, which in terms of resistance to frost may well correspond to the reference ones.

Table of the main characteristics of winter-hardy pear varieties

** Kopyetso is a branch of 8-10 cm long, always straight and sits at a right angle on a large branch. * Kolchatka is a small branch up to 6 cm long. It has one well-developed bud at the end.

Some frost-resistant pear varieties in the photo

When choosing a pear for planting, it is necessary to take into account not only the climate features of the area where the tree will be grown. The features of a particular site may also be important, is there enough free space for planting a new tree, what plantings are already there, and so on. After all, pear trees are very different not only in winter hardiness and ripening. They are very different in:

• the height of an adult plant - from dwarf to tall;
• type of crown - wide, narrow or columnar;
• type of pollination - one or more trees are needed on the site for harvesting;
• fruit size - large, medium or small;
• fruit taste - sweet, sweet and sour or tart with bitterness.

What is affected by height

Pears completely different in other characteristics are combined into groups according to the height that the tree reaches in the tenth year of life.

Tall varieties

The crown of tall pears begins at a height of 1.5-1.8 m from the ground, and the total height of the tree reaches six meters. Any operations to care for them and harvest are very difficult due to the location of the branches at a considerable height. A representative of tall fruit trees can serve as a pear of the variety Beauty Chernenko.

Beauty Chernenko in the photo

In the register of the State Commission of the Russian Federation for the Testing and Protection of Breeding Achievements, the Beauty pear variety Chernenko is recommended for cultivation in Central Russia. The narrow pyramidal crown of this strong-growing tree rises to a height of 6 m. It tolerates frosts to -25 ° C without problems. The productivity of Beauty Chernenko is stable and amounts to 12.7 tons per hectare. Fruits covered with delicate greenish-yellow skin with a beautiful red blush weigh up to 200 g each. An important positive quality of the variety is the resistance of the pear to scab.

Of the cultivation features, I can notice a very poor shoot-forming ability — it is necessary to get the skeleton — pinch or prune the ends of the branches, and they stubbornly want to look up — for the best skeleton, the branches have to be bent.

Grandson of Michurin, Michurinsk

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Medium

In pear trees assigned to this group, the distance from the lower branches to the soil is from 60 to 150 cm. Pears of this type are most often found in summer cottages and garden plots of amateur gardeners. The height of these trees does not exceed 5 m. The pear of the Vidnaya variety raises the branches of the narrow-pyramidal crown exactly to this height.

Pear Visible in the photo

My taste is exceptionally sweet without sourness. Even hard and immature ones have a sweet taste. Another aspect of this variety bears fruit on the ringworms (which, by the way, is also indicated in the description of VNIISPK). Perhaps the rootstock affects. Or maybe a different grade.

yri Trubchevsk, Bryansk region

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This pear can withstand winter frosts to -30 ° C. The tree grows up to 4 m tall. In its round crown, orange-yellow fruits weighing 120 g each ripen at the end of September. The taste rating of these pears by tasters is 4.2 points. The yield obtained over several years of testing averaged 12.2 t / ha.

My taste is exceptionally sweet without sourness. Even hard and immature ones have a freshly sweet taste. Another aspect of this variety bears fruit on the ringworms (which, by the way, is also indicated in the description of VNIISPK). Perhaps the rootstock affects. Or maybe a different grade.

yri Trubchevsk, Bryansk region

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Dwarf

The height of the trunk to the lower branches of such pears is not more than 40 cm. The height of an adult tree is about 3 m. Often, such trees are obtained by grafting pears of some sort on a dwarf plow. But there are dwarf forms of this plant. Pear Chizhovskaya is actually the root tree, that is, grown from a seed or cuttings, and not obtained by grafting it on a dwarf rootstock.

Pear variety Chizhovskaya in the photo

The oval crown of the Chizhovskaya pear rises no higher than 2.5 m. The frost resistance of the variety is high - up to -30 ° C. Yellowish-green with a pleasant sour-sweet taste, fruits weighing 100-120 g ripen in late August or early September. According to amateur gardeners, each year about 50 kg of pears are obtained from one plant of Chizhovskaya pear.

Pear Chizhovskaya began to bear fruit for 2 years after planting a seedling, bears fruit every year. He suffers frosts in winter and drought without any visible consequences.

Vyacheslav Samara

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Crown shape

The crown shape of a future pear may be a decisive moment when choosing a seedling variety. After all, the area occupied by the root system of a tree completely coincides with the projection of its crown. Gardeners who do not have much space for growing pears are better suited to trees with a narrow crown - narrow pyramidal.

If there is enough free space, then you can plant pears with a spreading crown - oval or round. The crowns of such trees already in the year of planting require the formation, so that in the future the branches do not break off under the weight of the fruit.

And very little space will be taken up by the colon-shaped forms of this fruit tree. The crown of such trees does not require formation. They carry out only sanitary or minimal cosmetic trimming if necessary.

The pollinator itself

Most plants of the Rosaceae family need cross-pollination to set fruit. Cross-pollination is called such pollination when the pollen of a plant of the same species, but of a different variety, must necessarily fall on the flowers of a plant of one variety. Most pears are no exception to this rule.

Pollen from one flowering tree to another is carried by bees and other insects, but in the conditions of Central Russia, often during pear blossoms, cold, rainy or very windy weather can interfere with cross-pollination. Thanks to the efforts of breeders, varieties of pear trees have appeared that need only their own pollen to bear fruit. Such varieties of pears are called self-fertile or self-pollinating. The list of this category of plants listed below includes only pear varieties listed in the state registry:

• Chizhovskaya;
  

  Fruits of the pear variety Chizhovskaya

• In memory of Yakovlev
  
  

  Fruits of the pear variety of Memory Yakovlev

• Rogneda;
  

  Rogneda branch with pear fruit

• Precocity from Michurinsk;
  

  Branch with fruits of the pear varieties Skorospelka from Michurinsk

• Klapp's favorite;
  

  Fruits of the pear variety Lubimitsa Klappa

• Marble
  

  Marble branch with pear fruits

• Simply Maria.
  

  Branch with the fruits of the pear variety Just Maria

The biggest pear

Pear fruit in size, and accordingly in weight, can be large, medium or small. Small pear fruits are considered technical. They can be consumed fresh, but more often such pears are used for processing. Large and medium fruits are intended for table (fresh consumption) or universal (for food and preservation) use.

Large and medium-sized pears for their intended purpose are dining rooms, that is, intended to be eaten fresh, or universal, that is, suitable for eating fresh and processed - jam, jam, jam, home canning, etc. The table shows the most common varieties of pears. They are arranged in descending order of fruit weight.

Pear fruit weight table

When the pear ripens

In the description of the characteristics of pear varieties in the state register, the ripening period is from early summer to late autumn. The exact dates cannot be named because they depend on the weather conditions in the current year and the pear growing area. But gardeners in practical ways established the correspondence of these periods with more specific calendar dates.

Pear ripening table

Even novice gardeners are quite capable of getting a crop of delicious juicy pear fruits in Central Russia. Frost-resistant varieties of this fruit tree do not require special care. With the right choice of variety and observing the rules for growing pears, they give a stable annual crop.