Everyone seems to be against growing full size pear trees. I need to ask why aside from the obvious reasons of being hard to pick , hard to spray, and taking longer to produce? I see a lot of advantages such as more pears, more scion wood, more fruit less space, to much for any person or animal to steal all of them at one time, enough to share etc… What are your thoughts? I love full sized trees.
You can’t easily prune out fire blight strikes. There a couple big ones I drive past that were half dead last year due to fire blight.
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Great point ampersand. I grow Kieffer full sized so I’m not sure Fireblight fazes them. It’s definitely something I need to keep in mind and make sure I grow Fireblight resistant trees.
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I have heard that unpruned seedling pears can get huge-- some 100 feet tall in woodlands in the U.K.
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Here are some large documented pears in Europe. One tree in Estonia is +60 feet tall.
http://www.monumentaltrees.com/en/trees/pyruscommunis/records/
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Ouch! All the limbs on that tree are at the top. The ones who are going to get any good fruit from it are the squirrels!
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There are good options for a 60-70% pear rootstock. Pears are very productive on a trellis system even with standard rootstocks. I find free standing pears hard to shape they just want to grow the way they grow. My question is why grow a bradford?
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39thparallel,
We have wild callery here that can be used for rootstock. Interesting thing is they don’t get fireblight at all. Its my belief we could have 100% fireblight immune pears now if we could cross those with kiefers etc. Can you imagine a world without fireblight? Since I use them for rootstock I never lose the roots of the tree even if I lose the top. I should say I’ve never had a callery pear get it yet. They reach a max height of 25 ft so far. The rootstocks are all genetically different. I plan to start using oxf rootstocks from cummings this year to get something more consistent.
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Matt,
I’m glad you posted because to me 30’ means full sized pear. Never saw one bigger than that. Lol those are huge!
Pears on seedling rootstock are not more vigorous than the OHXF 97 based trees in my orchard- I believe I have a seedling based tree or two but none are on dwarfing type stocks. They are easy to manage at a reasonable height here- pears on seedling require a fraction of the pruning as most apple varieties on 111 and can be kept at a height of 12-14 ft without excessive pruning.
If you don’t mind having to harvest fruit and prune from a short step ladder I see no advantage to a more dwarfing rootstock.
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I am having good luck with OHxF 333 anf 87. Ohxf 87 is a thorny mess if there is growth below the graft. Makes me wonder if it has some callery in it?
I found a small seedling that grew from discarded pear scraps. At first I wasn’t sure it was pear. It had thorns like a young pear, but he leaves were unusually small and the branches were so thin they drooped after they got to a certain length. Even the central leader drooped over like a vine. Having my doubts that it would ever produce decent pears, I grafted two buds on last summer. In the picture below, you can see the green central leader and branch on the right are the bud grafts. The branches on the left are from the seedling. I had to cut them back a few times to get them self-supporting. Normally I would expect a seedling rootstock to produce a large tree, but I’m not sure what to expect with this oddball. It seems the structural weakness is from branches growing too fast in length before gaining appropriate thickness. I’m not sure if this relates to the overall vigor of the seedling roots.
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I have a weeping seedling thats more of a pear vine than a tree. Like you I grafted it like I did all the others but who knows what it will do. Its 3 ft tall now while its neibhoring pear is 12’ . I’m hoping its a dwarf.
I have two trees that are standards and I have had no problem managing them. I keep them pruned
to an open vase system and kept at a manageable height. I get much more fruit than ones that I have
on semi dwarfing rootstock, and if you stay away from FB prone varieties, there’s nothing to worry about.
I’ve never sprayed any of my pears and get more fruit than I can eat and tons of scion wood that I’ll be
offering, when I post my list next month.
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The deer tried to steal all my pears but because I’m growing full sized trees they had limited success.they took what they could reach look at the base of the tree in the last picture. You can see the size of the tree by comparing it with my truck.
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I have a Menie and a Minie on birch leafed pear roots, planted in the early '80’s. I would guess them at 30 feet tall. Neither has ever gotten fireblight. I have a Patten and a Bosc a bit younger, and on unknown stocks. Both of those are about 20 feet, and again, no fireblight. I have a 7 or 9 year old weeping Bosc seedling, well loaded with little pears. It’s early here, PEI, so the little pears will size up till early November.
For here, full sized works well, more pears, and if I can’t reach will the pruning pole and the ladder, I just let the grass grow long to cushion their fall and let the tree drop them. They do bruise, but I make pear butter and other yummies that let me just cut out the bruise and use the rest. They will keep whole for about a week, even with a bruise, so we just eat around it, or cut it out with a pocket knife if nibbling outdoors. It’s cold in Nov, when the tree drops the pears, so they keep on the ground for a week or so. Once the wildlife discovers them, I have to take the rest to the house or they disappear. Bottled pears, pear butter, ah, the fruits of the good earth 
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Would love to see pictures of your pear trees. Majestic and beautiful old pear trees like these are the best of fruit trees from my perspective. They outlive most any other tree and during that lifetime they provide bountifully! I’ve eaten pears from the trees of the homesteaders who were here in the late 1800’s & early 1900’s. There is a pear tree on the neighbors land no longer producing from that time frame planted by the early homesteaders
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Thanks for posting Jocelyn! They look very healthy so they may live to be 100+ years old.
You’re welcome. Nice old trees are nice to look at…enjoy.
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