I’ve pondered this for about four years now. It seems to me that when I head back scaffold branches to a single branch with fingers growing along the axis that the fingers are slow to spur up, but when I let the branches fork I get spurs along the scaffold sooner.
Am I right about this? I’ve gone by the principle of keeping each scaffold to one single main stem with later branches removed if they get up to 1/3 or 1/2 the diameter of the branch they’re attached to. It doesn’t always seem to work for me, and scaffolds that I let branch sometimes seem to come into bearing sooner. But I just have the one tree with nine or ten varieties so it’s hard to reach any firm conclusion.
Clarkinks seems to know a lot more about pears and the way pruning and heading back affects the pear trees. I just read some of the responses that he posted about his experiences with pruning. I’d make sure to get his opinion on the heading back issue.
Great timing for me as well. I just have a few pear trees BUT the are sort of getting too tall for my liking. I was trying to decide how to make them more controllable. I’ll look forward to seeing the answers here.
This is how I prune apples which can be applied to pears Tipping to make a bushy more productive fruit tree . Remember the best way to control pear height is either with large amounts of fruit or dwarf rootstock
Someone is likely going to say they have a rootstock that gets huge and want to prune it back but the best way to handle that height issue is through a scion wood type. Varieties such as harrow sweet when planted produce pears in a year or two on an aggressive rootstock and runt the tree out via fruit production. Harrow delight, Asian pears etc. rootstocks all produce fast which reduces the size of the tree.
I was wondering about the rootstock issue with pears. I have mine on the OHXF 87. I had thought about OHXF 333 but some suppliers stated they were phasing that rootstock out because people were reporting having issues with it. They could not tell me the specific issues. They all seemed to have their own stock varieties on OHXF 87 and had rootstocks available of that and the OHXF 97. The 97 produces too large of a tree for me. So I went with the 87 instead.
So my question would be: In order to keep the tree size smaller I should let the tree produce as much fruit as it can for the first few years. Or should I thin the fruit yet keep the tree producing fruit. No taking the fruit off to get the tree size bigger.
I know some apple tree rootstocks runt if you allow them to bear fruit early on. Once they bear fruit whatever size tree you have , that is as large as it gets in height. Does the pear do the same or just stay smaller than normal since it is bearing so much fruit. Putting all its effort in fruit production not branch production.
Long overview I know. Sorry. I just want to make sure I do what will keep the trees smaller. I had a 30+ foot pear tree years ago and it was a great producing pear tree yet I could not get high enough to get all the fruit. I just do not want to have that tall of pear trees here.
For me a fruit tree needs to be kept to no more than 12 feet- anything over that and my wife gets scared about ladder issues. So I want a moderate size tree to produce.
Unfortunately I lost track of the rootstock my one pear was built on- I need to get ahold of the nursery and ask. It’s an OHxFxx. I’ve easily kept it to 12 feet and have gotten some decent production from it.
But I’ve had a couple of varieties on it that have been slow, and one thing I’ve noticed is that some varieties don’t seem to want to spur up until they’ve put on a good sized branch. I guess it’s a matter of maturity, but I don’t know.
I agree with you marknmt. I would like to keep all my trees about 12 feet or so in height. All the trees I need to have so I can get the fruit from the ground. One of those fruit picking poles with the metal fruit baskets at the top to pull it off with. If they get taller than that it is very hard to justify climbing up in them with a ladder to get another 1/2 peck of fruit out of the top part of the tree. I’d rather plant another tree that stays 12-14 feet tall than a 30 foot one that I cannot get the fruit out of.
I think it’s really important to bend pear branches to horizontal and to allow early fruiting as Clark says. My thing is that even bending does not always get us there. My Flemish Beauty has been shy, but Warden Seckel fairly generous, for example. I have a Joe Pezzuti Pennsylvania Wonder that I’ve never tasted even tho’ it’s been on my tree for years, but my White Doyenne and Dana’s Hovey are willing. My Bosc might bear this year, but I expected it to last year. An Anjou sulks. Gold Spice is dependable.
I am glad you mentioned about bending the pear branches. I will definitely do that. I have some branch spreaders ordered for some of my other apple trees and when I do that I will get to the pear tree I have and try the branch bending. See what happens with that.
The White Doyenne and the Flemish Beauty sound like they would be very good tasting pears to fruit from.
Good luck with your pear trees this year marknmt.
They are, especially the White Doyenne. It’s quite the combination of flavors. The FB is a fine pear, but not terribly exceptional compared to the dessert pears like WD and Dana’s Hovey. It’s probably comparable to a really good Bartlett; to my mind Bosc is probably a better pear. I’ve never had Comice so can’t speak to that.
FB was probably the main pear grown until fireblight wiped out so many orchards, especially in the northwest. It’s got a lot going for it.
A decently ripened Comice is my favorite pear. Of the pears I have tasted. However, growing a Comice here in my area is probably a waste of space and effort. I believe the Comice pears are a fireblight magnet. We get way too much rain and moist weather to try and grow it. Fireblight can run through a pear orchard pretty quickly. I do not need to have a variety that would be eventually taken out. I’ll spend my time waiting on a pear I can actually taste in a few years.
Now it looks like I will have to try and taste the White Doyenne and Dana’s Hovey pear.
Harrow sweet will fruit at 8’ with no problem. Once a tree spurs up it won’t put on a lot of vegetative growth. People need to fight the urge and resist excess pruning because it will encourage a tree to put on additional vegetative growth and stop producing pears. As @marknmt pointed out branch bending is a great technique to cause trees to set fruit early. @fullplate Yes and no if you want a 12’ tree it’s best to use ohxf333 because the rootstock is meant to fruit faster and stay smaller. Quince is an alternative rootstock @scottfsmith likes to use to maintain well established smaller trees. Every rootstock has a downside and upsides but ohxf97 was intended to be a larger tree. I grow oxf333 but have not had a problem. It fruits quickly and in general seems perfect for some of what I do.
Timely thread…my pineapple pear is huge at least in relation to my other pear trees…last year in an effort to keep it at a manageable height, I topped it at about 10 feet, but it keeps going up…maybe I just need to let it go.
please explain “bending branches”…do I literally bend the pear branches down into the rest of its branches?
my tree is already at 12 ft. and is very healthy.
It’s easiest to train branches towards the horizontal when they are young and flexible, and there’s a lot of ways people do it. When they’re very young branch spreaders (homemade or purchased) work well. As a branch adds length you can weight the tips with clothespins, nuts (the hardware kind!) on twist ties, and so on. Sometimes I tie mine to a branch below. Larger branches might be tied to jugs of water or concrete blocks on the ground.
If the branches are too large to respond to those treatments it’s possible to cut a series of kerfs on the underside of the branch. I’m not good at this, but it’s discussed here and should show up with a search. It’s something that I gather @alan does fairly routinely.
I do it hundreds of times a season, I’d say. The longer I keep a graft growing upright that I intend to turn into an near horizontal branch the quicker it establishes as it stays vegetative longer and more vertical growth tends to be more vigorous in any case.
Rarely, I snap off a branch my mistake, less rarely, but not often a branch begins to break and I secure it with electric tape in its original position for another year- sometimes even taping in a piece of wood for strength (like a cast for a broken arm). I advise people who like grafting to take the risk to learn the technique.