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How to grow your own pears (spoiler alert: it’s not easy)

Mark Diacono Mark Diacono

Mark Diacono shares his advice on one of the trickier fruit trees to get right: the pear tree.

If pears were a person, you’d have nothing to do with them.

Nurture a pear tree to a decent harvest and you enjoy none of the instant pleasure of apples, as most varieties are picked firm to develop in storage — after which the fruit will ripen from not-quite-there to squish when you pop to the shops for 10 minutes. Here in rainy south-west England, pear trees grow well enough, but, no matter how well I care for them, they look at me as the dog does after a fun walk on the beach with his favourite ball punctuated by a handful of treats: as if I’ve subjected him to a long and systematic programme of mistreatment.

After all that, why grow them, you may ask. Because, when you get a pear at its perfect peak, when it surrenders with merely the pretence of resistance, when its juice runs sweet and luscious, you forget its nuisances.

Pears like things just so; a sheltered, sunny location with a fertile, well-drained soil, ideally of neutral or slightly acidic pH is best. When planting, be particularly careful to clear a circumference of a yard around the trunk to minimise competition: mulch this with compost or well-rotted manure every late winter or early spring to help retain moisture and feed the tree. As much as it can be rainy here in Devon, I’ve noticed that watering pears through extended dry spells in summer makes more difference to fruit retention and tree health than with most other fruit trees.

Most pears need another variety for pollination; some varieties are self-fertile to varying degrees, but even they are more productive with a suitable neighbour. As with apples, each variety is assigned a number or letter to indicate the timing of its flowering — varieties should be of the same or adjacent group for successful pollination.

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‘Conference’ and ‘Doyenne du Comice’ are common, reliable and tasty varieties that ripen in October–November. That said, there are a great many superb pear varieties beyond commercial production that I would urge you to consider. If you choose well, you can not only partner varieties to pollinate each other, but also to give a successional harvest.

Pear ‘Doyenne du Comice’.

Four of my favourites work perfectly in this regard: ‘Beurre Giffard’ produces succulent, richly flavoured pears that are ready to eat in August; the lightly russeted, musky ‘Fondante d’Automne’ to follow in September/October; the sweet-scented ‘Louise Bonne’ of Jersey is ready from late October into November; and ‘Glou Morceau’ softens sweetly in time for New Year. If space is limited or you simply fancy the idea, pears take well to training either as espaliers, cordons or stepovers; back in the day at River Cottage, a wall of the kitchen garden was planted with perhaps 20 cordon pears, planted at an angle a yard or so apart, with varieties ripening from left to right.

Pear trees are pruned as you would apples, with the majority undertaken when dormant in winter. There are many online guides for this, but check whether your pears are spur-bearers — produce fruit at the ends of shoots — as these are pruned a little differently.

The three-stage process of ‘pick, store, ripen’ is a crucial one to get to grips with. Although it delays pleasure, it does mean few fruit are damaged by pests or in the process of harvesting, and this delayed reward means you have juicy, delicious fruit in the darker months, when their pleasure feels even more welcome.

One of the trickiest things to get right — at least at first — is when to harvest pears. Your supplier (or a quick internet search) will give you an approximate time when it will be ready, but much is down to observation. The first windfalls can be a good indication, but the more accurate sign is that fruit should be firm, swollen and with a subtle flushing of the skin colouring. In some varieties, this can be quite prominent, in others much less so.

Avoid squeezing, even that near-the-stalk squeeze you try to get away with in the supermarket. Pears should be cupped in the hand, lifted upwards and gently twisted; if it is ready, it will leave the tree with the stalk intact. If you are still unsure, bite into one; it may be hard as hell, but there should be an underlying sweetness.

Once harvested, resist the urge to bring them into the house. They need a cool, dry, dark place to develop; a garage is ideal. Lay them out in a single layer, not touching; I sit them on newspaper. Check them once in a while, removing any showing signs of rot. Once they have matured — check online or with your supplier for the time they need — bring them into the house, where they should ripen over the course of a few days. Ideally, have your shopping delivered during this time.

Mark Diacono grows edibles, both usual and unusual, at Otter Farm in Devon (www.otterfarm.co.uk). His From Scratch: Ferment is out now (Quadrille, £12.99)