"I would like to keep the trees organic, I don't want to deal with toxic pesticides around my kids. "

Many organics are toxic. I wish it was that easy.The stuff in treated wood is also used in organic pesticides. Just letting you know your statement is most certainly false. Organic and toxic can certainly be the case in some organic products.

Sorry for the terminology... just ignore the first part of the sentence then. I don't want to deal with toxic pesticides around my kids. Is there a way to avoid this problem without toxic chemicals? I am willing to put in work to make it happen... it's only 3 trees.

Your pears may be Keiffers. They have the tough bitter skin and a stony flesh. They do develop stone spots wherever blemished. Those stings may be from codling moths.

If you really want to do a lot of work to get pears, you can bag them. Fasten a plastic ziplock sandwhich bag around each fruitlet you want to keep. This will help keep off the insect pests and involves nothing toxic.

Those pears don't look like Keiffer, the neck is too pronounced.

My pears get those bumps and stony spots and they are caused by stinkbugs. Since you are in the same part of the country my guess would be you are also getting stinkbug damage. Some years there is a little, some years there is a lot.

Step one is get out into the fruit at different times of year and look for stinkbugs. If you see them, put down a coat of Surround and keep it refreshed several times in the summer. It doesn't solve the problem completely but it helps a lot and its completely non-toxic.

Scott

They look like Kieffer pears to me. If they are they are great canned or if you peel them eating them fresh. THey will keep for months if you keep them in the refrig.

They are almost surely not the original Keiffer. It is sort of diamond shaped with no pronounced neck.

Given the ubiquity of the name Keiffer there could well be varieties circulating under that name that are really something else. Its like the Brown Turkey fig, there are dozens of different varieties with that name on it since its the most well-known fig in the US.

Scott

Thanks all! After looking up the kieffer pear, I think that may be what I have... while some of them do have a little bit of a neck, most of them are more rounded/diamond shaped. The Google images look pretty similar. And YES, stinkbugs are a problem here... never noticed them outside, but they attack my house (yuck). Does the kaolin spray have any other useful applications in the garden? My apples didn't seem to be as bothered by the bugs, but if I am doing the three pear trees I may as well do the one apple too, right?

Question about bagging the fruit... is this a bad idea for wildlife? Will they try to eat the bags off? Seems like a great way to protect the fruit, but I don't want to hurt the deer when they come to eat my pears (and they will, lol).

Squirrels and raccoons will rip off the bags if they want the fruit inside. Don't know about deer.

Surround can keep bugs off plants in general, many bugs don't like walking on the stuff. It doesn't help for caterpillars but most other kinds of pesky bugs don't like it, including Japanese beetles.

Scott

I'm with Scott - they don't look like Keiffer. Neck much more prominent than is typical for K; look more uniformly 'pyriform' than is the norm for that variety.

It's just a fact of life that if you have stinkbugs, etc. feeding on 'em, you're gonna have that hard stony tissue at that 'dimple'. I just cut 'em out or eat around 'em.

You have a stony pit pear disease... It is a virus. http://postharvest.tfrec.wsu.edu/marketdiseases/pearstony.html

Mylalucus,

your article says the disease is not found outside Pacific west coast.

The OP is in PA. We have stinkbugs in the east. They cause dimple on pears and catfacing damages on stone fruit such as peaches.

This is a much better article!

I stumbled across this page while doing a search for the cause of this same issue I found with my pears (that look very similar to the OP's) this year. In brief: pears have stone cells throughout the fruit (this is what makes them grainy), and stress or damage causes those stone cells to cluster and form into the grains the OP and others of us have experienced. I am in Upstate New York, and though we also have stinkbugs, drought stress is most likely what caused mine.

I only purchased my home in March this year. I did not even notice I had pear trees with fruit growing on them until very late in the summer. In total, I have 3 trees which produced about 50 lbs of pears this year. Next year, I am going to pay better attention to them and have a better quality harvest.