“I haven’t bought a pear or peach or nectarine in ages.”
I have the same problem here in SW Wisconsin! Once in a great while we’ll get a shipment of Georgia Peaches at a local farm stand where it’s not uncommon for fist-fights to break out over them, LOL!
I have two pear trees (Clap’s Favorite) but they’re a few years from producing, yet. I’m rebuilding a decent orchard at my ‘new’ farm (1906) after leaving an established orchard behind at my 1900 farm. ;)
While I have a 4’x8’ asparagus bed here now, I sure do miss my established 40’ row of the stuff that I also had to leave behind. I did bring some of that root stock with me; I’m no fool! :)
I grew up in an area of Northern California where peaches, pears and apricots are grown. My grandparents knew several longtime local growers, so we always had oodles of gorgeous ripe fruit, often deemed unsuitable to send to the packing house. And of course all the fallen fruit we could haul away! You just don’t see decent stone fruit in the supermarket any more. Instead it’s all perfectly photogenic but rock-hard.
I had to start a new asparagus bed last year myself. I feel your pain.
I peeked under the straw and saw some garlic and onions that I planted in the fall and overwintered. And they are green!!!
They made it!
I'm having a devil of a time with my orchard trees. Some sort of fungus that causes the tree to develop open sores that ooze sap, and eventually weakens them to the point that the trunk will break.
It's happened to every single drupe that I bought at Lowe's. I pulled a nectarine, two peach, and two plum trees out of the ground a couple months ago, and I've got two more peach that are sick.
Those trees all came to Lowe's from a nursery in Oklahoma, the name of which is evading me at the moment. I should have known better than to buy orchard trees from a box store. It's a mistake I won't make again.
The worst part of it is that the trees don't show any symptoms until they've been in the ground for six or seven years, so I've lost a lot of time due to buying sick trees.