 All right, everybody, let's get started with our second talk tonight. And we're gonna learn about growing pears in North Dakota. Pears are vigorous trees, but they're not always hardy. And so here to share with us, the findings of our research is Kathy Widerhold. Kathy's the manager of the two and a half acre Northern hardy fruit evaluation project at the Carrington Research and Extension Center. She's been there since 2006. Georgia has 10 different kinds of fruits and Kathy loves them all, but pears are her newest fruit. And so she's got some new information to provide for us tonight. Kathy, welcome to the forums. Hi, thank you, Tom. Welcome. Let's see, I am going to talk about pears and we've been growing them since, I believe 2015 at the research center. And they're unique, they're kind of, they're nicer, you know, really delicious, which is wonderful. So let's get into these and see what they're about. So pear trees are not apple trees, right? So that sounds obvious, but you know, if you've been pruning apple trees, you might think, oh, pear tree will be easy, but it's really not the same, they're different. So we'll talk about that. And when you look to buy pear trees, most of them are not hard enough for North Dakota. You know, what I listed here, if you find something labeled extremely hardy or very hardy, if you could confirm that it's suited for zone three or four, I mean, three is of course better, but there's not many that are zone three. And then you wanna see something that's hardy to negative 30 or negative 40 Fahrenheit. So we do need something quite hardy for a pear tree. Also maybe your description of the pear, we'll talk about when your fruit ripens. And you know, I think about honeycrisps apples all the time. Our honeycrisps, boy, they are barely, I would say they're never ready before October 1st in Carrington. And we always get a freeze around October 4th, October 10th, more so around that 4th, 5th, 6th time. And I mean a hard freeze. That's when it's below 27 degrees or so. So if you could get your apple trees and your pear trees that will ripen in late September by late September, that would be your best bet. And the other thing about pears is there are some self-fruitful varieties, but a lot of them need two varieties to actually set pears. And you know, maybe your neighbor has an ornamental pear. There's a few of them out there. There's Prairie Gem from NDSU Research. That ornamental pear will pollinate your fruitful pear tree, but if you have the space, get two. And they do take up a lot of space. They're not a small tree. They're not a small tree. There aren't any dwarf pears. So when you think about your pears, then you have to think about tree care, right? And when you plant an apple tree, you generally have kind of wide roots. They're kind of shallow when they're wide. And we know how to deal with those. And when you have a pear tree, they have what they call more of a carrot root. You will get kind of a long taproot. Really, it's kind of a taproot. It might be cut off from the place you get it from, but they've done the proper thing to it, so it should be okay. But they've got some side branching on those roots, but mainly this taproot. So when you plant that tree, you have to be prepared to dig a little deeper for that center area, perhaps. But I recommend staking these. I mean, all the time, we don't recommend staking your trees anymore. But for a pear tree, I'm gonna say you should stake them for one or maybe two years, but use a loose support. You don't want your strings to be like super tight. You want them to be kind of loose. So your tree can wiggle in the wind. When your roots wiggle in the wind, they grow faster, stronger, better. They will help support your tree. So I would use, I prefer three, but a minimum of two supports that can go on your tree. And I use like some kind of a T-post and then string to some of these nylon straps that go around the tree just to support them for those first couple of years. You know, we didn't dead first. I thought they'd be fine. And yeah, like in a week or so, we had a wind and two of them kind of laid over a little bit. So then I got the stakes on them. So pear trees are also really vigorous. And this is where they're not like apple trees. You need to keep your pruning very light, like not even prune them for the first, say three or four or five years of their life because it really stimulates the water sprouts, you know, the vertical shoots that come up on apple trees when you prune. So pear trees are just, they're just a little different. What I really suggest is shaping your tree, those first few years that you have it. I think the tree in this picture is probably been in the ground for one year. That's about the size it looks. I made spacers. I used, well, we have all kind of little wooden stakes that go in the ground for marking things out in the field. I also bought some laugh and then I have access to a band saw but you could use like a hand coping saw or something but I use the band saw to cut these really deep Vs in the end of the laugh. And then I use those to make spacers between the branches. You want to create a 45 degree angle, you know? So here's your 90 or whatever. Well, this would be 90, right? But you want a 45 degree angle. That would be the strongest crotch angle, make the strongest branch. As it's kind of a compromise between branch strength and then vertical shoots do not produce fruit but horizontal shoots, horizontal branches produce too much fruit. So you're kind of doing a compromise strength and then the amount of fruit that you're going to get. So you want to kind of go for this 45 degree crotch angle between the trunk and the scaffold branches. So use these spacers for quite a while. You'll laugh at my next picture. This is the young tree and then use them for about three to five years. And here's great, right? On the right hand side there, that is my husband calls that my art project. I think it's a science project but either way, science and art kind of go together. And on the left side, showing you this very upright growth of the pear trees and they're all like that. And even once they get older and they start to settle down, any pruning you do is still going to make these vertical water shoots on the trees. I've taken some pictures but it's just really difficult to show them against the green grass background. So you'll have to take my word for it that they really make upward water sprouts when you prune. So another thing with tree care, this picture on the left is an example of sunscald. Sunscald can happen on any tree, can happen on maples, it happens on apples, it happens on these pear trees. This example is actually the variety named Stacy and it's the only one I've seen it on. So Stacy is probably maybe on the edge of hardiness for North Dakota, I'm not sure. But the sun, usually what happens with sunscald is that in like now, March, when it's very cold the sun is really strong, right? Our streets are melting here in Carrington but there's snow everywhere, only maybe 12 or 15 degrees today, but that sun is warm on the dark bark and it starts to melt all the sap that's under the bark and then stuff moves around. And then at night, it freezes, expands and it breaks open the cells and kills them. And so what it looks like in a year or two when you can actually see it is, is this on the left-hand side? This, you can see down to the wood of the tree, there's an opening and the young right in here. This is new bark that is reforming. It will grow and we'll cover over this area. This is the wood, but you want to avoid that. Okay, so on the right-hand side, what I did is I went to our local running store. I got the cheapest sprayer I could, which luckily was only $10 the year that I did this. And I went to the store and if you can get cheap latex paint, good luck. It's so expensive now, but at the time I was able to buy latex paint for less pre-pandemic, less cost. Anyway, just use flat white or semi-gloss, it doesn't really matter, but I think I bought flat white and I diluted it 50% with water, put it in the sprayer and then I just sprayed and don't wear anything good, don't wear anything good and don't do it on a windy day. And you want to spray like the south and west side, southwest is mainly where this sunshine happens. And that's because the hottest part of the sunny day in March is in the afternoon and the sun has moved to the southwest. And so that's where you're going to see this damage. So you want to spray the south and west sides of your trees with this paint. Like I said, it's good for apple trees, good for pear trees, good for any tender, thin barked tree, like in maple trees. You know, just don't worry what your neighbors think, just do it for the health of your tree. In a few years, the bark will get thicker, you know, it gets gnarly and then the sun won't bother it so much then. Some trees are maybe always susceptible to it, but once the bark gets thicker, then you won't have as much trouble. So the fruiting, fruiting of pears, people are always like, oh, when is my tree going to fruit? It's been in the ground three years. Well, you know, our variety, shorter hardy ND, actually began fruiting in its second year in the ground. It only had like two or three pears and it had two pears. And I went to look at them and I just touched it and it fell, one of them fell. And then the next day, a squirrel got the other one. So, oh well. But my recommendation is really don't encourage your young trees to have fruit and I would discourage them until your tree is about five years old. I mean, and that's, you know, maybe it's been in the ground three years, but a tree when you planted, it's usually about two years old, maybe three years old. But I think your tree should be in the ground at least three years, maybe five years before it has fruit because you need to get the trunk to a nice dirtiness and you need to get your scaffold branches to be sturdy. If you are letting heavy fruit crop those really small branches that you're gonna get, you know, a weeping shape instead of an upright shape and you're gonna get branches broken. And when I do let a tree start having fruit, I actually remove the outer fruit and I just let it have a few fruits towards the inside of the tree where the branches are more tough. So, but anyway, so when will your pear fruit? So it depends on the variety. Same for apples. This Schroederhardy ND began fruiting in the second year. They've had fruit every single year, super, super productive. Our other trees did not really have pears until the fifth year. And I've got two trees of each variety. And in year five, it was weird. Just one tree of the two varieties had fruit. And then we had no fruit the next year because it was the drought. Well, we always, I feel like we're always in a drought in Carrington, but it was the second year of a pretty strong drought here. No fruit. And then this past year in 2022, both of the trees of each variety had some fruit or a lot of fruit just depended. So it takes a little while. It takes a little while. They have to get mature. They have to get fruitful. So the one thing I will say about pear fruiting is that the pear fruit attachment seems really brittle. So what happened to me is I was on vacation and I came back on September 1st and I ran right to the orchard and I looked at the pears and I said, wow, tomorrow I'm gonna have to pick some of these. And there was a thunderstorm overnight and the next day all the fruit was on the ground. So a high wind or a thunderstorm can knock the fruit down. I got almost no pears that year just because their connection just seems kind of brittle. So this is what I saw. So that's pretty disappointing. That's from the Schroederhardt ND with all the fruits on there. They were still pretty green and kind of small that year but it's too bad. So let's see, fruit harvesting. This is kind of another science slash art project to harvest your pears I think. And I've been a little frustrated because one of my varieties and I think I'll talk about that next. But the normal suggestion for harvesting a pear is that when your fruit turns from dark green to light green and when the lenticelles which are the little tiny pores on the pear, when they turn from green to brown and you can kind of see this in the picture the bigger greener fruit on the left, it has spots on it but the centers of those spots are kind of whitish or light green. And then in the middle one for sure you should be able to see this but there are very tiny brown spots in the center of those pores. Those are the lenticelles. That's how a fruit breeze through its lenticelles. But when they turn from green to brown the whole fruit color is dark green to light green. And then the same way you test an apple you put your hand under the fruit and you lift it a little and then you twist it. And if the fruit comes right off in your hand it's definitely ready to be harvested. And for a pear that really that's when the pear is mature a pear is not generally ripe on the tree it's mature on the tree. And then you pick them and you put them in the cooler. And this is, so they're not ripe generally, generally there are some but generally you pick a pear at maturity and then what do you do with it? It's so complicated. Pears are also different from one another. So they ripen off the tree and this lets the fruit it converts its starches to sugar. So if you bite a freshly picked pear it's probably not very sweet and kind of hard and grainy but eventually those starches in there will convert to sugars and make it juicy and sweet like we would expect them to be but how do you ripen them? This is the million dollar question. Some pears need to be stored at room temperature after you pick them. Most would like to be a cool temperature or a refrigerator temperature. That's the best way to keep a pear for a long time if your pear variety goes along with it is to put them in the refrigerator. Then the next question is how long do you put them in the refrigerator or room temperature or in a cool place like your basement or a root cellar? Is it a few weeks? Is it three months? Who knows? It just depends on your variety. And then a general cue for ripeness on pears is when you kind of, you squeeze, you gently squeeze the stem area of a pear right up by the top. And if that gives then that usually means your pear is ripe. So I have felt so frustrated and like I said, a science project, proper harvest, proper ripening time because one of our varieties, I think it's a bad variety. So we'll talk about it still in a second. Okay. So here with the ripening, you know, this is where I said you don't, it's hard to know what to do. This variety pictured here is Patton and Patton is from South Dakota. So that's nice, it's close, it's probably hardy for here and it is for us. But so I picked them when they changed from dark green to light green. And then when I take them out of the refrigerator and put them at room temperature to ripen and soften and maybe turn slightly yellower, they spoil inside. So like every single one was spoiling inside. So those were the earlier ones I picked. So then I left some on the tree. I had better luck when the fruit was more of a light yellow. And then I refrigerated it and then a week, two weeks, a month, about a month maybe. Then I took them out and just ate them because if I left them at room temperature for any amount of time, they turned brown inside. So, you know, part of it might be how our soil conditions are, how like our calcium magnesium balances are in the fruit because of the kind of soil we have. I'm not really sure, I'm not an expert on this. But I have read, there's some comment in somebody's something or other that says Patton is one of the favorite pears and it's smooth and buttery. Well, ours are not smooth and buttery, they're crispy but they were still good. They were still a good pair. So I probably still have some work to do to figure out like what's the best way to harvest a Patton pear. So our varieties that we have, the ones I'm listing right here, these three are so far the best ones that we've grown out of the six varieties we have. Nova is the first one listed, a very nice pair, a pair you would expect from the grocery store. They're very smooth and tender. They call it buttery when they're smooth like that. They're juicy, they're very good. You would, you know, you're very similar to a grocery store pair, that's I guess what I could say. I picked them at light green, I refrigerated them and then when I brought them out at room temperature they turned kind of light yellow and they softened up beautifully. They're kind of a mid-September, early to mid-September they start ripening. Patton, which I mentioned, also a good sized pear. You know, three inches is what I say and that's kind of diameter, kind of diameter. But they have been crispy for us. So far I've been letting them hang to a light yellow on the tree, picking them, refrigerating them and just eating them. So they're ready pretty late, kind of mid-September and then I had to pick some right before the frost this year, the freeze this year, which was in early October. So they are a little bit almost too late for North Dakota but they were still okay. And then the last one here is Stacy. I think it's good, I think it's good. I am not sure. I feel kind of bad about this but the last two years that it has had fruit like two years ago and this year, I was on vacation and it ripened somewhere in the third or the fourth week of August and I just could not see it. So whatever, they were overripe by the time I got home the wasp had eaten out the inside. So they're kind of a medium fruit, they should be good. So I'm gonna hopefully next year I will be able to get these pears, we'll see, we'll see. So these three pears, these are the last three of the six that we bought and planted. These are, I would not recommend based on what we've seen. The Ayr's pear, it is listed as extremely hardy or very hardy in the St. Lawrence catalog but it died back two years. The first year a little bit, second year to the ground and it was a bad open winter. I expected it and it did die. So Ayr's no go. Ely, Ely is from the, also all of these are from St. Lawrence nursery. And it's a smaller tree, which is nice. I almost think it could be an interstem grafting maybe to make pears a little smaller but it has some spines, plum trees do, some pear trees have spines but the fruit has been very small and tannic. When I look at the description, it says small and sweet and juicy but ours are small and tannic. They have turned yellow on the tree. I've picked them so they can turn yellow in the refrigerator or out of the refrigerator. They've fallen off the tree yellow meaning they should have been definitely ripe on the tree but they have not been good. I have not been able to eat one really, really tannic almost worse than a eronia because they also have acidity but the catalog says they ripen in October which is really kind of late. So I'm not sure if we can actually ripen them here even. And then the last one is Schroderhardy ND very vigorous, very productive. The fruit is pretty nice size but it tastes terrible. It tastes terrible. And there is something about the vitgo pear. The Schroderhardy ND and vitgo pear are supposed to be the same pear from the same tree but the one they call vitgo is supposed to taste bad and the one that says Schroder is supposed to taste good and mine tastes bad. So I think I have the wrong graft in the trees that I bought. So I have informed the nursery about this so who knows, we'll see. So let's go, we're at about 21 minutes. So I think this is about it. Other pears that I've heard are good and I've heard this from multiple people over the years that I've been here. So I think these three are pretty good. Summercrisp from University of Minnesota. This one ripens on the tree. This is the unusual one that ripens on the tree. It's crunchy and it says it stores pretty well. I didn't try to grow these because people said that they were probably okay for North Dakota. So the other one, golden spice, kind of a small, medium pear used by a lot of the winemakers. So I've heard that something about after storage, then it gets this spicy flavor. I don't know if many people know about the spicy flavor. And then Uri, Uri is Euceriances in Asian pear from Asia and they're quite small but tasty. They don't last very long at all but super, super hearty. So lastly, this is the last slide here. Pears are tasty. I made this pear galette and hopefully you have access to this afterwards or write this down, but I got it from this blog called The Kitchen. And if you look for pear galette, you would find this. I made the recipe, like it said, it talked about frangapane. I don't know how to say that, frangapane. Probably said a different way in French and it's like an almond buttery thing you put on the crust first and then you put the pears on there. I use the patent pears because it calls for a firmer pear. So I use the patent pear. I tell you what, how good this is. I think about this darn thing all the time and my husband asked me about making it. So maybe I have to get pears from the grocery store and finally remake it. I have more frangapane in the freezer. So yeah, they are good. And I hope people will try pears. I said they're a big tree. They're kind of a little daunting, but if you have space, it's worth a try. And all trees are eventually firewood. So just give it a try. Oh, I should maybe in the, and this is just for the chat maybe. There is a handout. And what I did in that handout is I talked to a guy named Greg Krieger and he's from Galesville area and he has, he's talked to a lot of people over the years about pears and he's kept a list. And so I have kind of edited and given you that list in the handout of pears that may, may, may, may be okay for North Dakota. It's always a gamble. Like I said, that Ayer's pear said extremely hardy and then it winter killed. So you just don't know until you try it yourself. So all right. What do we got going on? Okay, thanks Kathy. Well, you know, Kathy, are you telling me we can't believe a seed catalog all the time? Is that what you're telling me? I love the seed catalogs that say, oh, this kind of fruit is sweet. It's sweet, it's sweet. And then you try it and they're all sour. You know, Kathy, that's why we have you. Yeah. The research. That's why, that's why we need you to tell us what's the right one. I'm serious about that. Okay, here we go. There's two pall pear trees. Never heard of a pall pear. They're close together. One is a crazilla tree. Why did I start with this question? Last year, zero fruit year before, maybe one or two, but nothing to write home about. This person's from Manitoba. So it's a pall pear. They're close together, but they're not getting fruits. So what would you say for somebody who's not, maybe the tree's not old enough yet? Maybe that's it. Yeah, they're probably not asking the question to know if they're old enough. Did you say they're both from Manitoba? Two pall pear and then there's a crazilla tree. Oh, okay, which is supposed to maybe cross pollinate it. You know, they always say, maybe you've got too much fertility in your soil or I really don't know that they may not cross pollinate, but if you think they're supposed to, if the catalog said they're supposed to, there's that. Sometimes they just take a long time. The sweet 16 apple tree, 10 years before we even saw any fruit on those trees. So I would do like an apple tree, maybe if you can take a branch and weight it down so it's below horizontal during the growing season and then let it back up at the end of the growing season, it should have accumulated sugars that maybe will encourage it to fruit the next year. And then that fruiting should spread throughout the tree. That's the safest way. Maybe they can see, did it bloom well to start with that? Yeah. Could be, be activity, could be issues. How about some more companion planting here? Does a will-seckle pear trees cross pollinate with patent? I don't know. Are seckles hard here? I'm sure it would. I think it would because this picture on the last slide of mine is actually an ornamental pear and they will cross pollinate. As long as they bloom at the same time, they'll cross pollinate. Yeah, okay. And here we go. Old trees never use the spacer. Is it possible to begin shaping these old trees? You can always try to shape them. You know, just don't do very much. Just, you know, it's going to take you, if an apple tree took you three years, maybe you should work on this for four or five years. I would just not shape, not take too much out of them. And even, you know, I try and they still make water sprouts. So... Yeah, but you put the spacer on a younger wood, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to be able to push it. I didn't know if you were talking about like spacers or if you're trying to prune it into shape. Both, huh? Well, pears, I think pears are one of the most upright of all trees. Yeah. They just want to go up. They just handle it. I would just let them. But it is nice to get that center opened up a little bit before they get mature. This guy's neighbor's got a lot of pears, but all the pears are small. So what are the size of the fruits in your pictures? What size of fruits were those three inches across you were talking about? You can see my head. If you can do this with your finger, they're not quite that big, but if you cross your fingers about an inch or so, they're nice. They're a nice size pair. Some of them are smaller. And I don't know if I can. Let me see. I'm going to go back here. You see this? I don't know. You guys can still see the slides, right? Yes. On the bottom left-hand side, those are both shorter, hardy, endy pears. One tree had barely any fruit, and the other tree was loaded. And I didn't thin it. And so that's the difference between a thinned tree and a loaded tree. A loaded tree will have very small fruit. How about Kathy? Have you ever heard of the early gold pear? I have not. I have not. I've grown it. It's great. It's a great tree. It's one of those urie. That's a urie selection. It might be in my handout list. It's in your handout. It's in your handout. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. It is in Bismarck. I don't know about. And I think those Eucerian pears in general are zone three. So we should have success with them anywhere in North Dakota. So when you paint your trees, Kathy, how far up the tree trunk do you paint your latex plane? You know, with the sprayer, you can go maybe a little higher. And I probably had a ladder out there. I'm not sure. But I would go up for as big of wood as you can. You know, get it until the bark is small or the branch is small. Go up as high as you can when the tree is young. It just looks ugly. It doesn't hurt. And you put it on the southwest side, right? If you use pale pink or pale green or something like that, then you cannot do that. And it's got to be white. That's the whole purpose, right? To reflect off the sun's rays. A pale color is OK. Well, you're just a rebel. You just like to push the envelope, don't you? Yeah. How about do you recommend calling a pear tree? Maybe an old pear tree. What does calling a pear tree mean? Do you mean to thin the fruit? Maybe? How about just, yeah, when I think I'm calling, I think about cutting it down. Cutting it down is what I think we're called. Maybe they'll write another question. Well, what would you say about an old pear tree? Would you ever think about cutting down a tree on the prairie, on the northern part of the prairie? Is that a thing? Well, if you have another one to put in its place, why not? That's right. You can use your pearwood for making smoked meat. So there you go. But you know, I mean, if it's not fruiting anymore, if you have the space, you can leave it. But sometimes old trees will harbor diseases, too, you know? So it's up to you. I'll tell you what I think about that, Cathy, with apples, especially. And an apple tree is like a person. It can live 100 years. But once it hits 40, it starts going downhill. So it had to be realistic. How about, do you want to talk about an insect or disease situations that we have to worry about with pears? The only disease I've maybe mentioned in the handout is a fire blight. That's the major concern with pear trees, is they're very susceptible to fire blight. That's about it. I don't know much else for insects. That's the killer. As soon as somebody calls me with a pear question, I know it's fire blight, pretty much. How about when you paint a tree, Cathy, does that allow the bark to breathe or should it be using something like burlap instead? What do you think about that? I mean, I can't specifically say, but it's recommended. It is recommended practice with apple trees and pear trees. And you're only doing half the tree. And you don't have to put it on super thick, so. Yeah, it's fine. The tree's fine. I've never read anything that is a problem. No, it's not a problem. How about you have to worry about bunnies? Do bunnies like to eat pears? I don't know that, but I'm sure they do. I put wire around them just like I did the apple trees. So you put a like a quarter inch hardware cloth ring around the base of the tree. Yeah. How about, you know, is a Parker tree hard enough? What do you think about that? Parker is not as hardy as Patton. So I would not go for the Parker is what I've read. You know, I've just just different stuff. My Parker's hardy in zone four. Well, I'm not in zone. But I wouldn't go to zone three with that thing. OK. How about Cathy, do you know this? I don't know this is gold. What about a golden spice cross with the Parker? Because they're different. Pirates, you serieness and pirates. Yeah, would they cross each other? Would they fertilize each other? I don't know. I don't know. I don't maybe not. You know, and most of the stuff you read is about the European pears, which are most of the pears we get in the grocery store. So I don't know. You don't get to read much about northern hardy pears. I will try to ask Jim Louie. He's a plant breeder, tree breeder from Minnesota. I'm going to ask Jim Louie about that. That's a good question. How about the water up here? Any different than your water and apple tree? No, no, they're pretty hardy. How do you stop a deer from eating the fruit? You put them in your freezer. The fruit or your fruit or the deer? You still put the deer in the freezer. There we go. OK, I think I know what you're talking about. You know, you're just going to have to. What I've done with younger trees, where I've had a lot of deer is take the like two by four inch wire and you can be a couple of feet off the ground and make a circle around that tree with some tea posts because the deer won't go under the tree. And if you have it out far enough, the deer, they won't jump over it or up or something like that. So if you just kind of interfere with where their face goes, it kind of bothers the deer. How high up do you go at that? Well, I mean, I would put it up like at your head height to belly height or whatever, just make a ring around the tree out away from the tree. And they don't want to go under it. That part I've read from the DNR over the years. OK, how about to have to worry about thinning out the fruit in springtime? I if you thin your fruit, you'll get bigger fruit. On the other hand, you have to don't thin it too much because your pear tree is so vigorous that it's good to have the fruit slow it down. But you'll you'll get bigger fruit if you thin it. How about have you ever seen like a little slug that attacks the leaves and turns them brown? I have not seen it on the pears, but I've get it on Aronia. Their pear slug soft lies in your yard. You're supposed to be able to blast them off with water. You can also use a spinosid pesticide insecticide that I know spinosid works against them. So pyrethrins, I'm not sure because they are a fly. They're not a caterpillar. I don't know if that works or not. But I know a spinus spinosad or spinosid will work against them. And that's pretty safe for humans. Oh, yeah, and pear slugs are not usually killer. No significant. They're just more of a nuisance in most cases. How about if it's really bad, you might have to do something. Yeah, definitely get that blast of garden. Especially if it's several years in a row. Then yeah, this person, this person's got a hard situation because they got those pear slugs and then the trees are 13 years old and no fruits. Oh, still bearing. So they have two different varieties and but they flower at different times. Oh, that might be a real clue. Better try another variety. You know, whatever flowers later, you might consider taking a branch off if that's possible. And you can smash the smash the end that you cut, put it in a vase of water, bring it inside. And you should be able to get it to bloom sooner and then just set it by the pear tree that's blooming earlier. And that's called forcing. Forcing, right? Yeah. OK, it might help. Oh, yeah, just plant another tree. That's that's I think the easy way to go. Let's see here. Let's see. Let's go to our chat box here to see if there's anything over here. Will a Urie pear work in Western North Dakota? It should work. Yeah. That's almost like a weed. That's a. Yeah. A herb, a hudar, H-U-D-E-R. Hudar, hudar, pair. Pairs I have. And I just don't really know. I don't know anything about them. So. Yeah. They talk about how these usurian pears are used in conservation plantings and but we would also take their value in an orchard situation. Some of them are just ornamental and they'll never taste good because that like prairie at the research orchard. We have one of the. I think we have the parent tree of prairie jam, which is very small pears. It's ornamental, but we have other seedlings around it and they have a lot of pears and they pollen. They cross pollinate with everything, but they. You know, they're not good to eat, but yet the Urie, the Urie and the early gold are usurian also. So somebody got lucky and those were tasty. Yeah. Yeah. Don't grow prairie jam for the fruit. No, that's not the purpose. Let's see, my tree got sunscaled, Cathy. What should I do about it? Well, in the beginning, I would try to maybe cut away that bark. If you're getting damp conditions, you might want to cut away the bark that's on the outside and that's dead because it could harbor funguses underneath there. So you want to let it dry out and I would just kind of maybe give that tree a little extra water in dry periods just to just so it has some oomph to to close. It needs to close over that that burnt area. So don't paint it or anything. Just let it naturally heal. And and if it's called it once, I would definitely paint the area around it. I mean, you don't have to use a spray or you can use a brush. The first time I ever did this to apple trees, I just used a brush and but the sprayer is definitely easier. And but it's also sunscaled. It's not a killer. It's generally just a narrow crack. So it's just it's just too bad, just too bad, but it's OK. And it takes a long time to heal. Right, Cathy, it takes it does. It can take several years. Yeah, maybe five years or more. Depends on how vigorous it will grow. Right. So OK, Cathy. You solved our question about can we grow pears in North Dakota? Sounds promising. I see one question. We have to rely on you to find. I see one question about somebody pruned their pear young and got water sprouts like me. This year, I tried pruning them in summer after they had fruit on them. And I will report back someday and see if that work because cherry plum apricot trees, the stone fruits, you should prune them after they set fruit. So I'm I'm trying this with my pear trees to see if it'll help. So what about a fire blight? You're begging for fire blight when you do that. Am I in the summer? You're making a wound during the growing season. That's when fire blight is active. But you're supposed to for black rot. So who knows? I know. I don't know about that. I don't know. I'm skeptical about that. I because fire blight is so devastating. That's just well, that's nothing to mess around with. No. But OK, this is why we have you to do the research when we look forward to results. I really mean that, Kathy. Keep it. Keep it going there in Carrington. It's got the most interesting research. And yes, you I think keep it going. All right. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, Kathy.