Pear Ideas, Tips & Guides

If you are looking for plants that look like famous strings of pearls, we have a few that will surely catch your attention with their similar growing habit and foliage!

The less common Allium ‘Mount Everest’

With so many varieties to choose from, it can be hard to know the Best Tasting Tomato varieties. Do not worry, tomato lovers! We’ve rounded up some of the most delicious tomatoes out there!

Pears are very ornamental trees, bearing attractive spring blossom and gorgeous autumn colour, and the addition of delicious home-grown pears is a bonus.

Every spring, all over South Carolina, we see yards, abandoned lots, natural areas, roadsides, and, in some cases, forests fill with white flowers. These first white flowers of the year are nearly all from the Callery pear tree (Pyrus calleryana). This tree is native to China, and while they may look the same, many of the trees planted in yards, around businesses, and in other managed landscapes across South Carolina are cultivars of P. calleryana. One of the most common cultivars is the Bradford pear (more information on Bradford pears can be found on this Clemson HGIC fact sheet HGIC 1006, Bradford Pear). Bradford pears, by themselves, cannot produce viable seed. But, if pollen from a different flowering pear cultivar (or a wild Callery pear) pollinates a Bradford pear flower, then viable seed can be produced. The fruit is often eaten by birds, and birds doing what birds do (hint: they fly and poop), spread the seeds across the land. When these new plants grow, they’re now Callery pears, the wild relative of Bradford and other cultivated varieties of Pyrus calleryana.

Asian fruits bring a tasty adventure to your palate! From sweet bananas packed with vitamins to figs' earthy aroma, each fruit has unique flavors and health benefits. Try juicy lychee, creamy jackfruit, or sour starfruit. Dive into the crunchy snake fruit, sweet mangosteen, or the delightful Asian pear. Don't forget the king of fruits – the mango, known for its unbeatable taste and fragrance. Enjoy these delicious treats from Southeast Asia!

I had a little holiday recently. I was hoping to keep you posted on where we were during my week away, but the wifi on the canal boat was a little hit and miss….well more miss than hit. Sometimes it’s great that way because you can really get away from it all.

The pear grown in Britain is the European Pear which derives from Pyrus communis, native of the temperate parts of Europe and the western part of southern Asia as far as the Himalayas. In America some varieties are grown which are hybrids between the European Pear (as represented by ‘William’s Bon Chrdtien’, known in America as ‘Bartlett’) and Pyrus serotina, the Japanesesand pear.

Man Made Fruits are the result of careful crossbreeding, genetic manipulation, and a dash of imagination! Scroll down to know about the varieties engineered by humans in a lab or a specialized orchard. 

Canadian houseplants offer more than just aesthetics—they’re a unique blend of hardiness and beauty that adapt seamlessly to indoor conditions.

Zone 7 offers a rich tapestry of fruits that not only thrive but produce juicy ones year after year. Read on to explore the most compatible, low-maintenance, and delicious Zone 7 Fruit Trees for your garden!

Extracted from The Farm Table by Julius Roberts (Ebury Press, £27). Photography by Elena Heatherwick. Read our interview with Julius here.

Almost anyone who’s interested in edible gardening would love to have their own fruit trees, but very few of us have the acreage necessary to grow full sized fruiting trees. All is not lost however, as some fruit trees are grafted on dwarfing or semi-dwarf rootstock that keeps the tree size down to a more manageable level. There’s a wide array of small fruit trees for the garden.

There may – or may not – be reason to worry if your young fruit trees are slow to grow and produce fruit. It depends on what type of tree you welcomed into the garden and how long ago you did it. To get fruit faster, you may want to plant fast-growing fruit trees. This article will provide you with more information on fast producing fruit trees.

Fertilizer can help any of your landscape trees, but it is absolutely necessary for fruit trees. You might enjoy a fruit tree’s blossoms and the shade it offers, but the primary purpose for fruit trees in the garden is the fruit. In order to produce abundant and juicy fruit, a fruit tree has to be healthy.

You’re familiar with peaches, apples, and pears. But have you heard of pawpaws?

Transform your fruit harvests into juice and cider with your own apple press.

There’s nothing quite like eating your own homegrown apples, but it can be tricky to harvest them, even on fairly small trees. So we’ve put together a selection of the best apple-picking tools that can help you gather in your delicious crop.

Green fruits can have a range of flavors, from sweet and juicy to tart and sour, and are rich in nutrients such as fiber, vitamin C, and antioxidants. Here are the Best Green Fruits with Pictures so you can eat and grow a variety of green delicacies.

13 of the Best Winter Pear Varieties to Grow at Home

Winter and Summer Pears: What’s the Difference?

One of the things that fascinate me is how astronauts from different cultures take different foods into space. When French astronaut Thomas Pesquet blasts off to the ISS later this month, for example, he’s taking four French meals specially created by a Michelin-starred chef. (Including a truffled pie of potatoes and onions from Roscoff, slow-cooked beef with mushroom sauce, almond tart with caramelised pears, and a freeze-dried cherry tomato dish. Heston Blumenthal created the first space bacon sandwich for Tim Peake.)

Courtesy of Dutch Boy Paints

Learn About Pear Tree Pollination

Q: We have a Malus (ornamental crab apple tree) in our back garden, which has grown from small to its present 20ft over 15 years. It buds and flowers nicely, but then turns a bit shabby. It doesn’t seem like a healthy tree. Can you help? We are debating whether we need to remove it and replace it. If it does need to be removed, what replacement would you suggest? CF, Co Kilkenny

Fruit pruning isn’t the easiest thing to explain to anyone, chiefly because no two trees or bushes are ever the same. The line drawings in reference books are helpful, but when you look at your tree or bush, it rarely looks the same as the diagram. Hopefully these simple guidelines will help you make sense of the twigs and branches in front of you. Just take deep breaths and remember the old maxim: Think twice, cut once!

March is a good time to feed your Pears, Plums, Greengages and Blackcurrants.

I thought this was meant to be a bird box but the wasps thought differently.

Here’s an exclusive list of Fruits That Grow on Cactus, you must grow in your garden to enjoy some unique and delicious edibles!

We can employ many tricks to grow more fruit in less space. One key strategy that is very useful to understand is growing fruits as cordons in small spaces.

September 22nd I was honored to be a judge at the seventh Bloomsbury Jam-Off in historic Camden, SC held at the Bloomsbury Inn. I was accompanied by two judges, and we worked gingerly to narrow the twenty-one entries down to our top five choices, paying attention to color, texture and taste. We then led into discussion by tallying up our scores and determining our top three winners. With over twenty tasty and creative samples to try it was quite challenging to find the best three over-all. There was also an award for the most unique entry.

Most people can benefit from drinking more water. Here’s how to make it more exciting!

Pyrus calleryana ‘Bradford’ was once touted as the perfect, sterile garden or landscape tree. It has now bred prolifically with other pear species and spread so extensively that it is now on South Carolina’s invasive plant list. Now is an excellent time to replace these pest trees with something more ecologically sound. We have several options to choose from at the South Carolina Plant Sale or visit your local nursery to find alternatives. The SCBG plant sale is online again this spring; details are here: https://www.clemson.edu/public/scbg/plant-sale/index.html

The recent news that all Pyrus calleryana cultivars – the most common of which is the Bradford pear – and several Elaeagnus species have been added to the “do not sell” list in South Carolina has generated a lot of buzz and a lot of questions from homeowners. We’ll try to answer some of those questions in this blog post.

1 tbsp light mayonnaise 2 tbsp reduced-fat sour cream 1 tsp fresh lemon juice ¼ tsp cinnamon 1 cup (¾-inch) coarsely chopped Bartlett pear (about 1 pear) 1 cup medium apple, chopped (about 1 apple) 1 cup small seedless red grapes, cut in half 2 T chopped walnuts

We had measurable snow at my house twice in two weeks! I picked up my camera each time to capture the beauty of the pure white frozen precipitation blanketing the bleak winter landscape. The snow quickly melted, and I’m starting to see things reawakening from their winter slumber. It’s an exciting time of the year for the most part, but there’s one reawakening I’d rather not see.