How to Harvest & Store Pears

How do I harvest and store pears on my pear tree? This is Richard Skinner at Hawkin's Corner Nursery in Plant City, Florida. Well it depends on the part of the country as to what type of pear or what variety of pear that you have. It's going to vary a little bit in the storage end of it. If you have a pineapple pear that grows throughout the south, especially even here in central Florida and that's what we call the hard pear. A little refrigeration and they'll literally hold for two or three months or even longer in some cases. Your softer pears, your eating pears, usually take more chill hours and we have two varieties that do pretty good here. It's the Florida home which is a University of Florida hybrid and the hood pear. Those three, the pineapple, hood and Florida home will all grow real good here in central Florida but you get in other parts of the country where you've got zone 7 climate type or even zone 8, certainly even zone 6, you got different varieties of pears. And generally speaking those are your real soft eating pears when they get fully ripe. So their storage is a little more delicate. Refrigeration of course is the key on those. Many different types of pears, so just check your variety as to what type that's an eating pear or a cooking pear as to how you store it. Harvesting is really simple. It's just a matter of picking it. They don't plug, they come off of the tree real easy, just grab it by the end and pull. This is Richard Skinner and Hawkin's Corner Nursery in Plant City, Florida.