The leave alone policy did not work for me. I have full size pear planted in 1948 that were completely unproductive until pruned down to ten feet. Since I cut them back they have been reinvigorated and highly productive. My pears that fall to the ground are usually bruised from the fall and rot in the ripening process. I only save tree picked pears for storage, Plus, I don’t want to pick higher than about 10 feet.
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Yes some climates are like that remember in Kansas we have frequent wind storms. Why prune when it will be pruned for me shortly anyway. My goal is to get fruit clean up the messes as they come up. If I lived in Washington I might prune to invigorate. If there is no die back , no cross limbed , no lack of fruiting why prune? When I prune like you I have a specific reason. The thing I’m trying to get across is people try to prune a pear to be pretty but they are not pretty they don’t like to grow like that. The person and the tree get locked into a heated battle over height and shape but unlike you it’s not really about fruit. Many people have never got fruit because they keep cutting off their fruit buds ever year. Their pear is 10 feet tall but 15 years later they ask why they still have no fruit. They never will get fruit until they let that wood get older and quit pruning that pear. Many people prune when there is no disease or reason whatsoever to do it. A man down the road pruned his beautiful apples 10 years ago taking them out of production and a couple years ago I began to see a few apples finally. In your case you had unproductive pears planted in 1948 which is different they need to be revived. This is another complicated matter which is what’s under the soil? In the Texas pan handle water can be an issue if your tree uses all its water feeding branches and leaves there was none for fruit.
@txpanhandle1 Would you attribute the current productivity of your pear tree specifically to it being kept short? Or rather would you attribute it to being rejuvenated by removal of unproductive wood? If I’m honest it sounds like your tree benefited from rejuvenation pruning which is a separate issue from overall tree height.
Also, did the pears fall on hard ground or was there anything to buffer their fall (like tall grass)?
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I have found I need to pick my pears before they fall to the ground. I have a couple pickers, a Twister and a basket-type, on long telescoping poles, but it is still a job to reach high pears. The very top ones I sometimes leave for the critters if I can’t shake them loose. I should probably lop off the tops of the tall trees, but they aren’t hurting anything, so I haven’t yet. Dwarf trees aren’t hardy enough this far north. Homegrown pears are soooooo good! Frozen ones make great pear crisp. Pear jam goes great on Greek yogurt. I think the Luscious are my favorite for fresh eating. The name says it all.
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No harm in leaving high up pears for the critters since you would not be getting them anyway if you topped the tree. At least by leaving it full height you aren’t creating a never ending pruning battle with the tree.
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@northwoodswis4 @JohannsGarden
Docapole will reach well beyond 30’ I have no full sized trees I can’t reach the tip of . Remember if your standing on the ground thats a 35’ reach. 30ft Docapole + Twist-On Fruit Picker Tool
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That is similar to what I have, except my pole is a swimming pool aluminum pole. But even with a lightweight pole, you still have the weight of that basket of pears way out in space that you have to lower to the ground. The Twister picks one pear at a time, so is a little less cumbersome, but takes longer, so I use both methods, depending on how high the pears are. The teeth of the basket also catch on the branches, which the Twister does not.
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Similar experience picking someone else’s standard tree. It has a lower part that we can reach with our pickers but we can’t get close to reaching the tallest part. But it is insanely productive so you still get a huge harvest. You can shake some of the pears down but some (half?) from the highest level will be damaged even falling onto grass. From that distance they pack quite a wallop if they hit you! I will have some standard size pear trees fruiting eventually.
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Excellent choice!!! TY for posting this info.
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As Dax noted, panhandle of Texas has water shortage issues. Whren fruit falls, even from lesser heights, it is like dropping on concrete. I will eat fallen fruit, but it won’t keep. I think the productivity comes from the trees spending all their energy on putting spurs on now they have better sun penetration. It is rejuvenation pruning, but how do you rejuvenate what you can’t reach?
I do not like to leave pear fruit in the top of trees because it is not eaten. It falls, or rots, and has to be picked up or we are overwhelmed with flies. But that is just what works for me. Every place is different.
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The best thing to do is look at some of the results while we been here on growingfruit from full sized pears and go from there. It works for me I’m very happy with the results.
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Absolutely every place is very location specific and none of us know what works better for you than you.
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I absolutely regret planting full-size pears in my orchard. When ordering from Cummins in 2005, Mr. Cummins informed me that he only had full-size pears in stock, and that if I ordered these he recommended that they be planted at the north end of my orchard. “And they will be a challenge to keep under control.” I was impatient and he was correct. I spent the next 12 years trying to keep them under control for purposes of spraying, pruning, and picking. Between the fire blight and the growth challenges, I gave up and chopped three out of five. It took the Worthington 15 years to fruit. Not really worth all the work. One other pear, Anjou, is on Quince and has been well behaved.
I gave up trying to help my neighbor keep his full-size Bartlett under control. Now it’s huge and the unreachable pears drop in wind storms and the deer get to them before we can.
Go dwarf of semi-dwarf…or go home. I’m planting big nut trees, not big fruit trees.
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Do the " semi dwarf" pear trees really grow that much smaller?
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@MikeC in my experience they do dwarf properly. My ohxf333 are not a huge trees at least not yet. For that matter ohxf87 and ohxf97 dont grow overly strong either yet. The ohxf rootstocks are not fast growing in comparison to BET or callery. There is significant dwarfing due to my clay soils as well. If you have deep rich soil and no deer you might not want to plant anything besides ohxf333 or ohxf87. 61% height is not bad so if a tree was going to be 30 feet it might be 16 feet. In my soil it might be 9 - 16 feet depending on the soil in that pocket where I planted it. In straight heavy clay that dwarf pear will never reach 10 feet unless you add some compost and wood chips. Quince reached 2 feet in that situation then died. Quince will not live at this location. They don’t have enough roots or vigor to live here.
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Thank you for the nice graph. I have seen different graphs but not as concise as this one. I have a clayish type soil, not entirely clay. I planted all OHxF 87 rootstocks on the tree pear trees I planted. Someone told me, in this area, that they were having issues with the OHxF 333 so they stopped using the OHxF 333 rootstock. I did not want a 30 pear tree. I had one at my other house years ago, too big for the place now. I had a lot better soil there than I do at my house now. My old place had been a sheep farm years before.
How tall do your grafted callery trees will get?
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It depends on the scion wood but most reach 20 -35 feet. Trees like seckle grow slower than pears like Clara fris, ayers, Kieffer, or Duchess D’angoulme. Some of my improved Kieffer in very high clay soil are only 15 -18 feet. They get larger but then wind comes along and they are back to where they were. 20 feet might be temporary in the spring but then fruiting drops them to 17. The fruit slows them down. Ayers in the same soil reaches 30 because the pears are not as heavy on the branches or the wood is harder. I’ve never in any wind storm lost a branch of ayers as odd as that sounds. Duchess D’ angoulme has huge pears over a pound and very brittle wood. It will always be broken down.
I have a Kieffer, Duchesse, and an Abby Fetel pears trees. All are on the OHxF 87 rootstocks. I had a Bartlett on the same rootstock but it got severe fireblight so I took it out. It was only about 10 foot tall after about 7 years.
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How wide are your pears on OHxF 87 and how old? I have some spaced at 6’ apart and am wondering if I should space them farther apart.
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That sounds awfully close together to me.
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