Is V2 + ころ / ごろ a pattern or not

Question

Xは食べごろだ。
Time to eat X.
X is ready to be eaten.

Question:
Can -koro/-goro be used as a general pattern by adding to masu-stem of the verb to produce meaning, that it is time to do this?

For example.

Xは殺しころだ。
Time to kill X.
X is ready/better to be killed.

Xは聞きころだ。
Time to listen to X.
X is ready/better to be listened.

etc.

PS.
If it would be a pattern, is it ok to use hiragana for this pattern or it is better with kanji like this?

Xは食べ頃だ。

Or both options (with kana or with kanji) are ok?

Here is a great answer on kanji vs kana for service grammar parts https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/17388/34165

Answer 1

First, 頃 right after another noun is always read ごろ due to the rules of rendaku. It can be safely written both in hiragana and in kanji, but my personal preference is kanji.

Next, the basic meaning of 頃 is closer to "days" or "season" rather than "time", as in 学生の頃 ("in my school days"). It almost never refers to a short period of time within a day. It's fine to say 栗は秋が食べ頃だ, but we don't say ピザが食べ頃だから来なさい.

Now, to get to the point, 見頃 and 食べ頃 are common, but anything beyond these is fairly uncommon. Learners should generally avoid "coining" words including 頃. We can find examples like 富士山の登り頃, 鮎の釣り頃 or ラストクリスマスの聞き頃 as long as it's related to seasonal events, and they are perfectly understandable, but they sound like witty wordplay to me. Actually, there are also a few examples of 殺し頃 on the net, but it makes sense only in special contexts. For example, a madman who has been taking care of a child for years only to kill him might say "あいつも14歳か、そろそろ殺し頃だ".