I grafted Ayers pear onto ohxf 87 last spring. The graft grew two main leaders. Also the ohxf 87 was growing bent over , not sure what caused it , if I remember correctly it was shaped like that when I received it. What should I do to correct this? My thoughts are to stake and pull the trunk of the ohxf more vertical and remove the leader on the right
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I might pull that right leader down to 45 degrees, giving dominance to the left leader and keeping all possible vegetative growth. Although Alan advises to remove side growth that exceeds half the trunk thickness. The trunk doesn’t look very bendy at this stage. Maybe you could make one of Alan’s hinge cuts next Spring to bring trunk vertical.
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As it has only been in the ground a few months I would consider re-planting it with the original trunk closer to vertical, removing the competing lower leader with a dutch cut, and then try to pull the remaining leader towards vertical, probably bracing the trunk for a season. @alan makes those hinge cuts but I don’t have enough practice with them to recommend them- the last one I tried I ended up making the cuts too deep and had to remove the branch!
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It won’t fix itself over night but here is a couple of examples I’m fixing as much as possible over time. Hey they are just fruit trees after all right? Some trees just won’t grow perfectly straight eg Bramley apples. Pears have terrible shape! The best pruner in the world would be frustrated walking out of a pear orchard.
Here is a video giving ideas what you can do https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8xx81Yg2WAI
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You don’t need straight trees- but I do or some won’t buy them. I’ve grown some crooked trees but that bottom one looks well on its way to becoming a pear chair- I can’t understand why the leader would turn horizontal.
These days we spend a couple days every spring in the nursery tightly taping young trees to metal conduit to give them the straight trunk needed for receiving best prices. Time well spent. There are always a few too crooked to ever really make straight- sometimes I use hinges to get the trunks to bend.
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I planted the rootstock in the spring of 2016 and then grafted it in the spring of 2017. I hate to try and dig it up at this point. I think I will try and pull it over
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Alan,
I’m going to graft a peice across end to end next year to get rid of the pear chair and make it a pear triangle for a year or two. Later I will trim out the horizontal peice. It’s a Harrow delight which as you know love growing horizontal. Once it’s got another peice grafted in it will look better. I’ve done it before with a type of cleft graft but the weird growth was not as severe. Wind does bad things to trees here sometimes and other times some of these wild callery grow with a corkscrew pattern! Perhaps one day I will embrace the weird trunks and make art work out of them but for now I do what I can to fix them. Some trees here I find growing the same way where a branch landed on them etc and they grow around them. Im really not sure I remember what caused these but out of hundreds of trees these are my worst and they are actually fine long term. Another thing that happens is feeding deer give you weird angles if they bite the top of a pear down to a horizontal angle. Here is an example of that where I got lucky and the tree kept heading up instead of out because of the bud direction. Look at the limbs below and you get a chair if he keeps eating. Actually it would be a T in this case. This is a bench graft of eldorado from this year. Who knows a nice pear chair in the orchard might be nice when I get old lol
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I pulled the trunk more vertical , then tried to pull the left leader back to vertical… split it, %#*+^
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Ouch! Not what any of us hoped for- I’m sorry! But as Alan says, you don’t need the tree to be straight. And you will still get a good tree out of it, I do hope.
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Oh I’m sure it will be fine, I will work on it tomorrow, looks like I will keep the left leader, lol. I am not known for having a light touch, kind of a joke in my family
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I’m impressed how much growth it put out in few months. it must really like it there.
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I think it helped to have the rootstock in the ground for a year before I grafted.
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Here is my magness graft after its first summer on ohxf 87, looks like two leaders are forming . Should I remove the leader on the left?
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I’d try to see if I couldn’t train it to a more horizontal position, and if it’s too stiff I’d consider heading it back fairly low and seeing if I could train the new growth to horizontal; keep in mind that if you do it that way you’ll always have that dog leg to look at! Also keep in mind that I’m not a very good pruner. 
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I feel like this limb is too low to make horizontal, since it is magness and slow to fruit maybe I should consider that
So here’s my brand new Korean Giant Asian pear that was planted about a month ago. It’s doing well so far. I’m wondering when it’s time to start pruning. Should I keep couple of branches and pinch out the rest? Or should I wait until next year? I’m hoping to stick to 3 scaffolds and try to prune to a bowl shape. Though I’ve read that it’s not easy to do with pear.
Now or hold off?
I’m no pear expert but here’s something that stuck with me from Dr. Jim Cummins of Cummins Nursery in NY. He said words to the effect: when you plant a pear, put your pruners in a drawer, lock the drawer and don’t unlock it until your pear starts fruiting. Until then, train, don’t prune, by bending branches from vertical to more horizontal.
I think that’s the same theory that Clarkinks advocate. But that would leave quite a few scaffolds going side ways. Very close to each other. It’s hard to see in the pic but about 10 of them on that short tree.
Well, I shouldn’t say anything if both Clark and Cummins are gonna differ, but just for discussion’s sake:
Keep the bottom 24" or so clear, and don’t allow a second leader to form. But do, as Hambone says, train by bending, or with toothpicks or spreaders, and be prepared to thin down to a few scaffold branches when the tree does start fruiting. I say that because I always keep too many branches on my trees. I also don’t thin my greens enough in the veggie garden. And, I save string, twist ties, and plastic bags, bits of wire …
;-)M
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