Bartlett Pears - the most common backyard variety are a sweet summer treat. Picked and ripened in August, they are great to eat fresh - during the summer. But we're still eating other pears in my household, and you could be too if you're willing to branch out and plant a new variety or two - or three.
Winter pears are ready to be picked when lifting them up causes the stem to release. Then they need to be stored in a cold place - the refrigerator - for three weeks or more - before they ripen into the sweet fruit we all love. The bosc and red D'Anjou pears have all been eaten already - we had a lot of company during the holidays -, but the Comice pears have just come out of the fridge - a dozen at a time - and when the crop is big enough, we typically eat them through March. YUM!
So why am I talking about pears now? So that you will be motivated to prepare a planting spot, and put your household onto the path to fresh February fruit for the future. Look for a reasonably well drained location - hard to find this year - and put down a square of cardboard 3 feet on a side. Pears can tolerate wet soil though. Cover your planting spot with leaves, and in two months, the grass will be gone - actually decomposed into a fine soil - and you will have a spot to plant a bare root tree.
Alternatively - if you're too busy skiing now, you can wait until March, remove a three-foot circle of sod, and a foot of soil. Then put the sod in the hole upside down, put the soil back and plant there. I'm tired just talking about it; hence my preference for the cardboard grass recycling method.
Never amend the soil when you plant a tree. If you do, the roots may never leave the comfort zone of the amended hole, and if a fruit tree doesn't spread its roots, your harvests will always be paltry.
I'm John Fischer with Good Gardening.
