ANSWERS: Meta-Crossword #4 - Fruit Picking

It's been thirteen days since I've posted my fourth meta-crossword, and as usual with these types of puzzles, I've had more than a few people solve it. Take a look at this list of solvers:

• Paolo Pasco ****
• Eric Maddy ****
• Adam Weaver ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Pavel Curtis ****
• Grant Fikes **.71828 (Well, he wanted e number of stars, so...)
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Dan Simonds (he solved the crossword, but not the meta)
• Mom (ditto)
• Debbie Underwood ****
• Janis Ferry ****
• Lynn Sweeney & Cayden Curtis ***
• Yossi Fendel ****
• Bryce Herdt ****

Now if you want to know the answers to this puzzle, or are just curious as to what some solvers said about it, just go below the break!

All of the across clues with asterisks next to them has the name of a type of pear hidden inside their answers, which are all highlighted above. So PEAR is the answer to this week's Bonus Puzzle!

Apparently, this was tougher than I anticipated; at least one solver initially thought the answer was GRAPES. As solver Grant Fikes put it, "BOSCO and CONCORD are types of grapes, [and] PRESS reminds me of a wine press" He would later get a nudge from solver Pavel Curtis (who got to this puzzle via Grant's Twitter), and Grant got the correct answer, saying "I was so misled by the red herring of the grapes that even though I recognized BARTLETT as a variety of PEAR, I would never have guessed that other varieties of pears existed as substrings. [...] Gimme e stars for that solve."

Solver Tyler Hinman "very nearly submitted the solution with only one answer filled in, which would have been a record, but I played it safe."

Solver Adam Weaver "was only familiar with two of the five varieties, but "Bartlett" was enough to give it away. This would have been a tough (but still good) meta if not given that the answer was a fruit "

Solver Bryce Herdt said "I remember solving from the bottom and thinking, "I seem to recall ANJOU is fruit-related.""