As I have earlier mentioned, plants and hens sometimes – often – don’t go together. Either the plants don’t like the chickens and end up poisoning them (Thankfully I think my bantams are too canny to eat poison, touch wood) or the hens like the plants – too much, unfortunately, as it can often be a case of a nibble here, a nibble there, and suddenly the greenery has vanished into thin air.
One solution is to get a fruit tree. The tree leaves should be too high for hungry hens to forage and a tree bearing fruit is always a useful plant for a garden.
So here’s a big welcome to Cosy Cottage’s conference pear tree.
No, Mabel, it’s not for you to eat.
- Facts of the Day
- 1. The conference is ‘reliable and self-fertile… It has long, pale green fruit.’
- 2. Other varieties of pear are Jargonelle, Beurre Hardy and Marguerite Marillat.
- 3. The pear’s ‘natural home is in the countries around the Mediterranean – it needs more warmth and sunshine than an apple tree’ if it is to fruit well.
- Information courtesy of Growing Food by Anna Pavord
Dreams and Adventures at Cosy Cottage 
Back on farm many years ago, our chickens would always make holes around the trees. Thankfully the olives didn’t mind so much! Lovely having fresh eggs so the chickens stayed!
LikeLiked by 4 people
The fresh eggs do make up for any damages caused to the garden! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hope they dont destroy it, my two are terrors if they get into the garden.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mine are terrors too! I don’t trust them, they assume everything is theirs to eat! 🙂
LikeLike
Yummy pears. Hope you enjoy it for a long time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Anita. 🙂
LikeLike
It looks as though Mabel is sizing the new tree up for a snack nonetheless! Good luck to the new addition, and I hope it bears you lots of fruit. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, yes, I’ll have to keep an eye on Mabel around the pear tree! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m going to get a dwarf conference pear tree next year. I actually saw some at the Range and hope they will have them then.
Anyway, I didn’t know that pears originated from around the Mediterranean. I’d thought they were as British as apples.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read about the pear tree being from the Mediterranean from a book called Growing Food by Anna Pavord. She didn’t go into much detail, just said ‘the pear’s natural home is in the warm countries around the Mediterranean’. Unless she meant a particular variety? I’ve never really thought about pears before until I got my pear tree. Just thought they were tasty and refreshing and otherwise took them for granted! The more I write, the more I realise there is so much more to learn! 🙂
LikeLike
Indeed 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good luck with this pear tree Clare- good eating once it gets a little older.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Linda, yes, it will be nice to eat home-grown pears. At least they’ll be too high up the tree for the chickens to eat! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, you’re right, and hopefully one doesn’t stand another one’s shoulders or back. 🙂 We had a neighbor with plum, pear and peach trees years ago. We just moved here and they had these trees and would give us bags of fruit. My mom was always baking treats with them. She’d share some treats with this elderly couple. They moved into an apartment as it was a corner house, and too large to maintain and the new neighbor cut down all the trees.
LikeLiked by 1 person