Pear Fun

Half of the success on the way to getting a good harvest of delicious fruits is the right type of fruit tree, which will feel comfortable in your region, with its climatic characteristics. Therefore, before going for seedlings, you need to study a lot of information, consider different options, consult with experienced gardeners and only then make a choice. In this article, we will consider the pear Fun.

Pear Fun: variety description and characteristics

Pear Fun: photo of an autumn variety

The birthplace of the Zabava pear variety is Belarus, it was there that a team of scientists led by GM Myalik, by crossing the Aleksandrovka and Lyubimitsa Klapp pears, received the variety that will be discussed in this article.

Pear Zabava is a high-yielding autumn pear variety. The crown of the tree has a pyramidal crown, medium foliage of the tree, a thick, powerful trunk with flaky bark and strong moderately thick "skeletal" branches that extend from the trunk at right angles. Young leaves are bright green in color, but as they grow, they become dark green, and the older the pear tree becomes, the larger its leaves become. Ovaries are formed on ringed shoots, both simple and complex.

Unfortunately, the variety is not self-fertile, so other pears will need to be planted on the site. The most successful companion-pollinators for the Zabava pear variety will be such pear varieties as Nadyadnaya Efimova, Bere Loshitskaya, and Osennyaya Lyubimitsa. It is important to choose a variety that will bloom in the same period as Zabava.

Fruiting occurs in five to six years. In a favorable year, with good care, you can collect up to seventy kilograms of pears from an adult tree. If you grow the tree on an industrial scale, you can get more than fifteen tons of fruit from each hectare.

Zabava pears have a very beautiful shape, almost round with an elongated top. The average weight of such a pear is 150-170 grams, in a state of technical ripeness, the color of the fruits is yellow-green, and when fully ripe, they become golden-yellow with a red "blush" on one side (precisely on the side that was turned towards the sun while the pear ripened on a tree).

The pulp of pears Zabava has a predominantly sweet taste with a slight acidity, a pleasant aroma and juiciness are much more harmful. The skin is quite dense, due to which the fruits are not prone to cracking and can be stored for a month at room temperature (at a lower temperature, the shelf life is somewhat longer). Tasting assessment of Zabava fruit is 4.6 points out of five, which is an excellent indicator.

Pear Fun: advantages and disadvantages

Like any fruit tree, the Zabava pear has its own distinctive features, which can be attributed to the advantages or disadvantages of the variety.

If we talk about the merits, then these are:

• High yield of the tree both when grown in private soda, and in large farms.
• Excellent taste and beautiful appearance of the fruit.
• Slow growth of the tree, which makes it easier to care for it and pick the fruit.
• Resistant to the most common pear diseases. However, the declared resistance does not exclude the implementation of preventive measures, because any disease is easier to prevent than to cure later.

The disadvantages of the Zabava pear variety include the fact that, due to its youth, at this time, scientists do not have complete information about how the tree behaves during severe frosts, as in the middle lane. If during the tests it turns out that the plant is able to withstand low subzero temperatures without additional shelter, then it will be safe to say that the Zabava pear variety has no shortcomings.

Pear Fun: planting and care

Pear Fun: photo of an autumn variety

Choosing a place. When choosing a place for planting pears, two factors will be decisive: an abundance of sunlight and a low level of groundwater occurrence.

The tree should be illuminated by the sun from all sides, and, if possible, have protection in the form of a wall of a building or a fence on the north side - this barrier will protect the pear from the cold north wind. And the abundance of the sun affects the quality of the crop, because fruits acquire their sugar content under the rays of the sun. Therefore, the more light, the sweeter the pear.

As for groundwater, in the case of their close occurrence, from a certain moment the roots of the plant will inevitably begin to get wet, then rot, and as a result the tree will die. Therefore, if the groundwater is located closer than 2.5 meters to the surface, then it is necessary to put a sheet of tin or slate at the bottom of the planting pit, a solid surface will help to unfold the root over time and protect it from danger.

Selection of seedlings. For most varieties, two-year-old seedlings are recommended for purchase. When buying a pear "Zabava" it is better to purchase a one-year-old plant, as it takes root much better and faster in a new place. Examine carefully the trunk, branches and root system of the plant. The bark should be smooth, without spots or sagging, branches should not have traces of mechanical damage. Pay special attention to the roots: if you find the slightest traces of rot, you should refuse to buy this instance and continue choosing.

Planting work is carried out in the spring or autumn. The main rule is not to disturb the plant during the growing season, that is, it must be planted either in the spring before the start of sap flow, or in the fall, when the pear goes into a state of dormancy. Compliance with this rule guarantees a speedy adaptation. When planting in autumn, you need to choose the right time so that the tree has time to completely root itself before the onset of frost. For this reason, in regions with harsh climates and short summers, gardeners prefer spring planting, and in warm southern regions, pears can be planted both in spring and autumn. The difference is that in the fall, the watering of the plant occurs mainly due to the precipitation, and during the spring planting, you will have to water the tree regularly until it finally takes root.

Landing. After you have decided on the place for the Zabava pear, you need to start preparing the landing pit. It is necessary to focus on the size of the root system, adding about 1/3 of this size to the depth and diameter. A long peg must be installed at the bottom of the pit, which at first will serve as a support for the young tree. One or two buckets of specially prepared soil mixture should be poured into the pit and not leveled, which will include humus, fertile soil (remaining when digging the planting hole), coarse sand and expanded clay, all in the same parts. Then 1-1.5 buckets of water are poured into the pit and a tree is planted into the resulting nutritious "mud", gently spreading its roots and gradually covering them with earth. To prevent the trunk from falling sideways, it is just attached to the installed support.

Make sure that during planting the root collar is not buried, it should be located two to three centimeters above the soil level. After you filled the hole with fertile soil and watered it, the soil will naturally settle, so you will need to fill up the earth and compact it a little.
The pear, like all fruit trees, prefers light and loose soil. Therefore, if your site has heavy and clayey soil, then you will need to dig a rather large hole (with a depth and diameter of about one and a half meters), fill a thick layer of drainage material on the bottom, and then fill it with specially prepared light and nutritious soil. To do this, mix peat and coarse river sand in a ratio of 4 to 1. Then, several buckets of water are poured into the pit, and after about a week and a half, a tree is planted.

Watering mode. Pear variety Zabava needs watering during flowering and fruit setting, at the stage of rooting, in hot and dry summers. It is necessary to water the tree in specially made furrows, after the moisture is absorbed, the furrows are leveled, and the soil is mulched with some organic material (you can use hay, straw or spruce branches), while the mulch layer should be 10-15 cm. Due to active life various microorganisms, the mulch layer is constantly decreasing, so it must be renewed periodically.

Fertilizers. After planting, it is fashionable not to feed the tree for one or one and a half years, since it will have enough nutrition from the planting pit (provided that you have properly prepared the nutrient mixture).

Starting from the second year, the pear should be fertilized as follows:

• As soon as the snow melts and the soil begins to warm up, the trunk circle should be carefully dug up with the addition of a complex fertilizer (for example, nitroammofoska) at the rate of 1 tablespoon of granules for wood under five years old. And two tablespoons for trees from 6 years old.
• During the flowering period, the time for potash-phosphorus fertilizers comes. One teaspoon of superphosphate and potassium salt should be applied under each young tree and a double dose of the same fertilizers under each adult tree.
• After harvesting, foliar feeding with potassium monophosphate and root feeding with wood ash follow (0.5 kg for each tree).
• The last feeding is carried out after the onset of cold weather, when the pear is at rest. It will take three to four kilograms of rotted manure for each plant that is more than four years old.

The next year, everything is repeated in the same way.

Formative pruning. Pear crown Fun needs shaping. At a five-year-old tree, at a height of about 70 centimeters, the first "skeletal" branches are located in the amount of two to four pieces. After about half a meter above them, there is a second tier of "skeletal" branches, and so on, depending on the height and age of the tree.

To get such a crown. You can shape a tree in three ways.

• Pruning in the summer, or, as it is also called, pinching. The essence of the procedure is that in the process of active development of shoots, by pinching the tops and breaking out some unnecessary branches, slow down the growth of the tree for two or three weeks. Such a delay contributes to the ripening of shoots, the appearance of side branches and the laying of fruit buds for the next year.
• Classic pruning, which is carried out in early spring or fall, after the tree has shed its foliage. In the process of pruning, you should remove the branches that grow deep into the crown, and also shorten the shoots of this year a little. Such pruning tends to stimulate dormant buds and induce vigorous growth, which must be controlled by avoiding crown thickening. But in the case of the variety "Zabava" you can not be afraid of this, since the tree develops and grows slowly, this is one of the peculiarities of the variety.
• Branch deviation. This method is resorted to if some of the branches grow not at a right angle, but at an acute angle relative to the trunk. They are bent with spacers and a stretched rope or twine, which are tied with the other end to a support fixed to the ground.Such procedures should be carried out very carefully so as not to damage the bark of the tree in the place where the spacers are installed, and not to break the branches, pulling them to the ground with a rope. This method of formation will take some time, but with it the fruit branches are formed faster and, accordingly, the tree begins to bear fruit a couple of years earlier than usual.

How to prepare a tree for winter.

One of the stages of preparing a tree for winter is whitewashing the trunk. This procedure is needed in order to protect the trunk from frost cracks, neutralize harmful insects that plan to overwinter in the bark of a tree and begin their subversive activities in the spring. As a rule, they are engaged in whitewashing of trunks in November, choosing for this the warmest and most importantly dry day. It is not difficult to prepare such a whitewash: it is enough to combine lime and clay with water and stir well (the mixture should look like thick sour cream). It is necessary to whitewash not only the trunk of the tree, but also the forks of the "skeletal" branches.

As we said above, the frost resistance of the pear has not yet been studied, therefore, in the conditions of the middle lane, it is definitely recommended to cover the plant for the winter. The tree trunk circle should be covered with a thick layer of mulch, and the trunk should be overlaid with spruce branches and wrapped in burlap or geotextile. Some gardeners recommend wrapping a fine metal mesh around the trunk to protect the tree from rodents, but when using spruce branches as a shelter, this can be avoided, since the needles scare off mice.

Diseases and pests

Pear Zabava has an average resistance to both fungal and bacterial diseases. This is not a disadvantage, since no fruit tree has 100% immunity from diseases. To protect against fungal diseases (such as scab), it is necessary to carry out preventive treatment with copper sulfate or any other preparation containing copper in the spring before the plant blooms, and then after the leaves have fallen off.

Bacterial diseases such as cancer are much more difficult to prevent and cure. All affected parts of the plant must be removed to healthy wood and burned, and the tree must be rescued with antibiotic treatment.

To combat an army of harmful insects (aphids, moths, ticks, moths and weevils), you can use special adhesive belts that are put on the trunk and collect sticking pests on their surface. In case of large-scale damage, you will have to use an insecticide (Aktara, Fufanon, Inta-Vir).

Conclusion

Summing up, we can say with confidence that the Zabava pear variety is definitely a good choice for those who are ready to devote time and energy to the garden in order to get a good harvest.

Most of the reviews of gardeners who already grow the pear variety Zabava are positive, although negative reviews can also be found. There are very few of them and they are mainly associated with the fact that for some reason the tree is sick. In different cases, judging by the description, this is either bacterial cancer (in this case, most likely you will have to say goodbye to the tree), or discomfort associated with improper planting or improper care (in these cases, everything is fixable).

So if you are ready to follow the planting and grooming rules, then the Fun pear will not disappoint you.