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| hi, first time poster. we just picked our first harvest of asian pears in our new house (the tree is quite old). however the skin is very sticky. is this normal and what is the best way to clean it off? we have a ton of asian pears so any tips on how to clean a whole bunch in a short amount of time would be appreciated. they are tiny asian pears not sure what type they are. i did notice that there are a bunch of tiny flies (gnats?) flying around some of them. thank you! |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by asianpear123 none (My Page) on Sat, Aug 17, 13 at 21:57
| oh, and if anyone has suggestions on what to do with all of these asian pears! |
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| Clean with water. In the sink. Likely they're sticky due to one of several pests which produce honeydew. Among them aphids and scale. |
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| Next spring, when the fruits about a marble size then thin them out. Leave one fruit every 6 inches and your fruits will be a lot larger plus prevent broken branches from heavy fruits load. Tony |
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- Posted by asianpear123 none (My Page) on Sun, Aug 18, 13 at 15:54
| Thanks so much for the replies! I ended up filling up my sink with cold water and two cups of vinegar then dumping the fruit in. Then I put two cups of cold water and two cups of vinegar in another container and used a washcloth to wipe down each of the apple pears in the water/vinegar mix. Then I put them in container with cold water to give them a final rinse. It seems to have helped get rid of the stickiness. Definitely labor intensive. I am going to borrow a dehydrator and try making dried apple pears. Will report back how that goes! tony - i will take your advice next year and see if that helps. i would love to get bigger fruit as right now they are just three/four bites and then done. it is alot of work to core them since there are so many and so tiny. |
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| I'd like to emphasize the thinning part because many people don't thin enough. It's quite tough emotionally to thin hundreds of fruitlets out!! I personally would thin at least 70% of them off. I've bigger and better-tasting pears that way. Asian pears set hundreds and hundreds of fruitlets esp. on a mature tree like yours. Fruit comes in a cluster of 5. Thin them down to one fruitlet per cluster. Some clusters you can just take them out if they are too close to one another. Normally, Asian pears' skin is not sticky. You may want to find out the causes (certain bugs?) and try to get rid of them so you won't need to spend so much time cleaning them again next year. I've not had enough Asian pears to do anything else. I eat them fresh, give some to family, friends and neighbors. Never have enough. Asian pear contains a lot of water. I don't know how well it will dehydrate. If it were I, I would make pear sauce instead. Good luck with it next year. |
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- Posted by asianpear123 none (My Page) on Sun, Aug 18, 13 at 20:06
| thanks mamuang - those specific instructions really help. we "inherited" a gardener so I will talk to him about this. i was surprised that there were flies on the fruit because i assumed the gardener would have taken care of it. i realize that i might need to be a bit more hands on when it comes to this tree. I don't want anything bad to happen to it! |
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| Asianpear, Next year when you pears are thinned well, you should post us a picture for its color, shape and size. Some of us may be able to tell you what variety it is. Let us know your zone and your state will be helpful in case you want some suggestions about your future fruit tree planting. Same zone but diffirent parts of the country affect fruit trees differently so indicating both zone and state is a good thing. |
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- Posted by asianpear123 none (My Page) on Mon, Aug 19, 13 at 1:42
| mamuang, sure will do that. i live in CA (Bay Area) and i think i am in Zone 10a - 30 to 35 (F). i looked the zone info up on this website so hope i went to the right place : http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/ here is a picture of this year's fruit - they are about 2 inches in diameter thanks!
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| Your fruit look very much like my Twentieth Century asian pears. |
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