The first of the orchard trees to bloom are the Asian pears, on the left of the photo is the shishenko Asian pear, this started to blossom at the beginning of March. The Asian pear on the right of photo is the shiskenksky , this blossoms at the end of March. Both trees origins are from china, so they don’t suffer badly in the English frosts. The masonry bees are the first pollinators to emerge so on these sunny days we hope they come out to do their job
Asian pears look like green small apples they are very very juicy and have the texture of a crisp eating apple. So I start picking them around July. Cooking with them I treat them the same as a eating apple, and make crumbles and pies. or they can be eaten straight from the tree and are very refreshing. To keep the wasps from eating them we hang jars of water with a dollop of jam in the bottom, the wasp go for the sweet smell of the jar and then drown in the water, this is the most humane way of keeping the pears till we harvest them. At the end of April beginning of may it’s blossom time eating cherry trees.