Photo credit to Bernie Nikolai who is growing this out on the very cold canadian Praires

Arriving well wrapped and ready for late fall dormant planting where a few more very HARDY fruit trees. One of these 3 year old fruit trees is Krazulya. Krazulya is Russian for “Beauty” and it is the most flavourful and hardy of all the early ripening pear tree varieties. Hardy to Zone 3 and being tested in Zone 2.

I picked this pear tree for a number of reasons, first that its crazy early.. mid aug for fresh eating, not much is ready at that time of the year pear wise, so I figure its great for us, and that one fully producing, a few can be sold out to friends for that perfect week of fresh eating..

The second reason is that mid-aug is a slightly slower time garden wise so its good timing for canning this pear not hitting me being ready in that heavier fall push..

The third reason I picked it despite the smaller fruit, is that it will be ready and can be juiced in 2nd and 3rd week of aug giving me one of the sweetest pears with good spice flavour to use to help can up our summer peaches in a fruit juice with the lightest amount of sugar possable.

So many others will be ready to late to help me in the canning kitchen, so while some is for fresh eating, most if for juicing for the canning use and the left over fiber and skins will be used for fodder.

“Krazulya is a very attractive looking pear, hence its name “Beauty”. The fruit is yellow with a bright red cheek. It is the best tasting early ripening pear, being very sweet with a hint of spice. In flavour tests, Krazulya received a mark of 4.7/5, which is exceptional among pears, and even more among hardy pears. The flesh is juicy with a buttery texture and the shape is more round than the common pear. Its skin is tender, smooth and glossy. Fruit is about half or two-thirds the size of a Barlett, weights ranging between 90 and 120g. It’s ready for harvest mid to late August and should be eaten quickly as it does not store particularly well (1-2 weeks).”

Thank you to the Hardy Fruit Tree company out of Quebec, I hope to add a few more russian produced hardy pear trees in 2021 or 2022.

Creating pear tree varieties is a lot more difficult than apple tree varieties and finding a flavourful and hardy variety is a huge and lengthy task that requires a lot of patience. It took many decades for Russian scientists and researchers to develop the Krazulya variety by way of  hybridization and selection techniques. It originated in South-Ural research institute of Fruit & Vegetable Growing and Potato Growing from a cross between Pozdnyaya (that means “Late” in Russian) and Malenkaya Radost (which means “Little Joy” in Russian). The author of this cross is E.A. Falkenberg.