For many years I would keep the pits of some of my favorite grocery store fruit and try to grow them at my farm. Everything looks so spectacular coming exclusively from California. Everything is also patented and totally illegal to use without permission-leaf, pollen, buds or seeds I have been told. But here was the land of great promise in front of me. I have to try. I did it in secret. There I could find giant apricots the size of baseballs and white peaches that tasted liked sugar crystals. What I didn’t realize was that the breeding of fruits for this specific California climate would not allow me to grow their progeny in Michigan. Everything died in one winter. This beautiful diversity was useless for my climate. I was surprised something wouldn’t stick. I do not give up easy.

It was the fancy round pears in a mesh stocking that caught my attention. They were grown in another fruit rich climate of Washington state. I will extract the seeds and see what happens. It was a type of fruit I had seen before but was unaware of the species it represented or its wild counterpart at the time. I was working with several Korean strains of pears one of which was an insanely astringent pear rich in bitter flavors impossible to eat fresh. It was hard to believe that these are related. But in the world of fruit breeding, you know someone is going to create a selection sooner or later that is delicious and sweet. The seedlings I planted from the grocery pears grew slowly and were constantly hammered by deer in that location. I put 5 ft. tree shelters on them and even those got rammed and knocked over several times. Eventually with constant vigilance, I was able to get them up and beyond the browse line. As the trees matured and began fruiting I was finally able to taste test the results as you see above. Each seedling has its own profile of flavors yet you can get the giant pear flavor in all of them. Even the one that looks like a meteor has a flavor too despite its propensity to have cracks like the Grand Canyon on its surface. A few of the seedlings died due to fireblight and a couple just gave up the ship due to the deer eating the foliage. But those that did make it did represent a chance to clone the fruit in some way and bring in another Asian pear variety into existence should you want to.

Amidst the piles of grocery store fruit, one stood out and made it through three decades of Michigan winters saying it was adapted, useful and delicious. Mesh nets are not needed. A couple of them splatter into sauce as they fall from great heights hitting the ground and spreading their fragrance throughout the area. The deer have noticed again. They too played a role in shaping the trees fruit spurs and all.