Your pears and apples are ready, here is where they go

Pears and apples do not ripen on your schedule, and they definitely do not wait for you to figure out a plan.

If your trees or your farmers market haul are handing you more fruit than you can eat fresh this week, here is what actually works for each one.

Pears ripen off the tree, not on it

This trips people up constantly. A pear picked too soon shrivels in storage and never develops real flavor. A pear left too long turns coarse, grainy, and soft, sometimes rotten before you even notice.

Oregon State University Extension recommends picking pears mature in size but not yet ripe, then letting winter varieties like Anjou, Comice, and Bosc finish ripening in cool storage at 35 to 40 F. That takes 30 to 60 days depending on the variety.

If you plan to can the pears, pick them firmer than you would for eating fresh.

Do not bother trying to freeze pears raw: OSU Extension is direct that fresh pears generally do not freeze well, though cooked pears hold up with limited success.

A pear that looks ready on the tree usually needs weeks in cool storage before it actually is.

The canning math decides how much to pick

Once your pears have ripened enough to work with, canning is the classic move, and it scales predictably.

OSU Extension puts one bushel, about 50 pounds, at 20 to 25 quarts once canned. That works out to roughly 2 to 3 pounds of fruit per quart jar, math worth doing before you pick more than you can process this weekend.

Asian pears are not the same fruit as Bartlett or Anjou, and they need to be acidified before canning since they do not carry the acidity of standard European pears.

Apple butter beats applesauce for using up a glut

Apples give you more room to improvise, but the safety rules still apply once you start canning.

Laura Easter, a Master Food Preserver volunteer with University of Maine Cooperative Extension, makes the case for apple butter as the most underrated way to use up an apple harvest, ahead of applesauce or pie filling.

She sticks to the National Center for Home Food Preservation's tested recipe, and notes that adding cinnamon or ginger does not change the final product's acidity, so it stays just as safe to can.

One New Brunswick family takes it further, pressing their own cider each fall and drying apple peels for a homemade pectin source. [VERIFY: whether this family's specific cider-pressing setup meets a food safety standard beyond what the article describes] The peels you usually toss are not nothing.

Apple peels are not just compost. Some growers dry and grind them into pectin.

Bottom line

• Pick pears mature but not ripe, then finish them in cool storage rather than on the counter, per OSU Extension.
• One bushel of pears cans into 20 to 25 quarts, so plan your picking around your canning weekend.
• Apple butter is the most underrated use for an apple glut, ahead of applesauce or pie filling, per University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
• Do not toss the apple peels. They can be dried and ground into a pectin source for other preserves.

Your zone

• Zone 3-4: Apples and hardy pears often ripen right before frost, so pick slightly earlier than the mature-but-not-ripe window above and finish ripening indoors in cool storage.
• Zone 5-6: A staggered harvest brings pears and apples off the tree in sequence through fall, giving you time to can and press cider across several weekends instead of all at once.
• Zone 7-8: Your season runs long, and the main risk is faster spoilage once fruit is off the tree, so picking at the right window matters as much here as anywhere.
• Zone 9-10: Pears can hang in cool storage longer before you decide whether to ripen or process them, based on OSU's 30 to 60 day window.
• Zone 11+: With less need for long-term storage, canning stays the better option even in a warm winter, since fresh pears do not freeze well regardless of zone. [VERIFY: whether pear and apple varieties suited to zone 11+ climates are covered by OSU's Pacific Northwest-focused variety list]

Sources

• Oregon State University Extension, "Preserving pears" - https://extension.oregonstate.edu/food/preservation/preserving-pears
• University of Maine Cooperative Extension, "Apple Butter: Preserved for Versatility" - https://extension.umaine.edu/food-health/2023/10/17/apple-butter-preserved-for-versatility/
• The Journal, "From the Garden: Harvesting, storing and pickling fresh pears this season" - https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/harvesting-and-using-up-pears-from-the-garden-4836855-Oct2019/
• NB Media Co-op, "Preserving harvest and preserving heritage: Making apple cider in the Nashwaak Valley" - https://nbmediacoop.org/2020/11/24/preserving-harvest-and-preserving-heritage-making-apple-cider-in-the-nashwaak-valley/ Photo: Apples in basket 2018 G1 by George Chernilevsky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AApples_in_basket_2018_G1.jpg Photo: Pear DS by Augustus Binu : flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pear_DS.jpg Photo: Pyrus pyrifolia fruit on tree PS 2z LR by PumpkinSky, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyrus_pyrifolia_fruit_on_tree_PS_2z_LR.jpg