Mark Diacono shares his advice on one of the trickier fruit trees to get right: the pear tree.
If pears were a person, you’d have nothing to do with them.
Nurture a pear tree to a decent harvest and you enjoy none of the instant pleasure of apples, as most varieties are picked firm to develop in storage — after which the fruit will ripen from not-quite-there to squish when you pop to the shops for 10 minutes. Here in rainy south-west England, pear trees grow well…