On average, if left natural and unpruned, how tall will a European pear get?
I think this is a Maxine pear, but not sure. Labeling got lost from when it was planted in '08.
I’ve pruned it and pruned it. It is a massive grower. Made the mistake of planting too close to the deck. Didn’t know any better back then.
Is it on its own roots ?
I had a bunch of them 30 foot or more. Last year I cut them back to a height that I could grab the fruit with my picking pole. Even the two I have on quince are over 20 foot.
I second that! I had an unidentified, neglected pear tree growing in my yard. It was really tall and spindly until I shortened its trunk due to a fireblight strike years ago.
Here is a big pear tree in my yard. It is some sort of European pear and is about 35 feet tall. My guess based on other trees and some random info about the previous owners of my house is that it’s about 25 years old.
I still haven’t gotten to pruning it! All the brush in front is autumn olive and other weeds that were growing at the base of it or in front of it.
The tallest pear tree I know of was on an old home place where the house had been demolished leaving the pear tree growing. It was over 70 feet tall. I spent a good 10 minutes measuring the shadow of that tree so I could calculate the actual height. it was loaded with pears… so high they would hit the ground and turn to mush.
Usually taller than wide.
If it’s on a full sized rootstock, 40 years from planting, it will probably be 30’ tall and at least 20 feet wide at the widest point.
Hmmm… The length of the shadow shouldn’t have much bearing on the height of the tree since it will vary depending on time of year. The tree height and shadow would only match if the sun was positioned perfectly to allow a 45° angle from the top of the tree to the tip of the shadow.
Johann, measure your own shadow then measure the shadow of the tree. Simple ratios will allow you to calculate the height of the tree. If you are 6’2" tall and your shadow is 6’2" long, the sun is at a 45 degree angle. If the tree shadow is 70 feet long at the same time, then the tree is 70 feet tall.
Depends on the type of european pear.
This one unknown pear, which could be madam boutant Unknown Pear stays very small even on callery. I prune it to 8 feet. It is not hard to cut it back every 4 years. It is a fireblight magnet but its very tiny even on standard rootstock.
He said it was a vigorous grower- I don’t know if such a tree would start off vigorously and self dwarf later on, but I expect the vigor will continue as long as it is healthy.
How tall depends on lots of things… how long the growing season, how much of it has good growing weather (when it gets hot the stomates close, when it’s overcast and cool not much is going on either). Most of all, the nature of the soil it is growing in- how deep, drainage, OM content, etc. FIRE BLIGHT resistance. Where I am, pear psyla resistance. Perhaps. how heavily it crops.
Based on how much this tree is already growing, I wouldn’t be surprised it it tops at 70 ft. or so as FP suggests.
There are things to be done to slow it down. Topping a tree half up after its mature and fruiting is one way.
Yeah, but his question was, what if he did nothing pruning-wise- how tall would it get?
The old fashioned dwarfing method is root pruning. I’m guessing that doesn’t encourage fire blight.
A former assistant of mine spent years working in a commercial orchard. He once told me that the sweetest and best colored Fujis he ever ate were from a mature tree that a tree spade was used in an attempt to ball and burlap it for sale, but the spade hit a boulder before completing the job and the operator withdrew the blades and dug a different tree. The fruit was from the same season, I believe.
Don’t know. Bought at the nursery way back.
I believe that would absolutely work a spade makes sense. I’m not encouraging people to do this , but if I want fast fruit, intentionally tie a wire tag on to a point of constricting the branch. That forces fruiting and wont kill the branch if you cut the wire later.
I would love to sell those pears to hunters to plant in the woods to feed animals! Once established it would compete with the most vigorous forest species!
I believe I saw a quince that large as well, with a single trunk almost 3 feet wide loaded with huge fruits, but at that time I did not know what Osage Orange was and I may have confused them, because that both grow in the south of Russia, Osage Orange is highly valued as a medicinal tree.
I did that to the 30 foot tall 40 year old Clapp’s Favorite (or maybe Clapp’s Best) pear, it stopped producing and I completely cut off the top leaving 4 large wide reaching branches lower down, then the following year down to 3 and grafted into it on top with a few interesting varieties and Asian pears and adding low branches into the trunk, surprisingly the original tree started producing heavily again.
The Rotkottig Frau Ostergotland pear put on massive growth in just a couple months a pencil diameter shoot 14" long off of a 1 inch nub sticking out of the bark graft. That probably used a whittled down 2 inch section.
The Asian pears did great too, and hopefully the Shipova Fruiting Ash hybrid is doing well too.
This was Zemlyak’s big knife trunk grafting method, and I put in a rather heavy forked branch, it worked pretty well despite my breaking the shoots while trying to train them.
I have solved many issues with this procedure but until you posted this I never thought about using it to determine the tree height. Thanks
My standard pear tree, probably a Kieffer pear, was about 25-30’ tall. It was a beautiful tree. The tree was already there on before I bought the property. So I am only guessing as to what variety it was. However, it looked, tasted, and fit the Kieffer pear description. This was before the internet and having access to information like that to more confirm it.
