Good Morning All.
Being full into spring here in the deep south, I have a question about my young 3-on-1 grafted Asian pear tree.
The tree was planted last spring. It broke bud 4 weeks ago. Each grafted tree initiated new growth uniformly. Today I went to look at the tree and none of the new growth tips are active, meaning none are showing continued new tip growth. I don’t see any obvious insect activity. A few weeks ago I did find and kill a single cucumber beetle. Don’t know what it was doing there.
I will add that two of the tree varieties produced a single flower on a spur (Shinseiki and 20th Century, not the Hosui). Each of those flowers has germinated and the fruit is about half the size of a marble.
I don’t think these tiny fruit are stealing so much of the trees energy that all growth on all three grafts would stop.
I did put fruit tree fertilize spikes down this year, since it’s the second year in the ground here, so it’s not a lack of nutrients.
Water-wise I have watered every week when there’s been no rain. We are expecting an inch of two of rain the next few days, so perhaps I will see if this initiates some new bud growth thus pointing to a water issue.
If anyone has had this experience and knows the cause, please chime in. I want to suspect some kind of insect, but beyond the termination of new growth, I don’t see any leaf or stem damage anywhere.
You will see though one of the stem tips looks a little dark in color…
Here is a photo of the little tree, a few of the new vegetative growth tips, and one of the little fruit.
Thanks
Philip
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@Shibumi
Fruitlets do steal some energy from the tree. They likely only cost you a few inches of growth. The question always is, do you want fruit or growth? If the fruit does mature it wont be great until the tree gets more established. I would remove the fruitlets. There is another limiting factor, which is not having enough feeder roots. The tree needs to take the time to grow underground as well. In the first 2 years growth is limited but in the 3rd year expect a large amount of growth. Old timers had a saying about Fruit trees “1st year they sleep , 2nd year they creap, 3rd year they leap” . Those light green leaves on the pear let me know you have a slight nutrient deficiency. It is most likely a trace mineral like zinc or boron it needs, but only a soil test would tell that. Don’t over react and add to much of something. It is better if you add a good fertilizer containing trace minerals and nutrients. Many use a fertilizer spike for that as they last the full growing season. This is not a recommendation as there are many better fertilizers, but this fertilizer tablet has some basics for fruit trees Gurney's T-I-M-E-D Fertilizer 100 Tablets | Gurney's Seed & Nursery .Fertilizer should contain both macro and micro nutrients. In my area we have heavy clay which means heavy nutrients. Those nutrients normally are not available to plants. By adding compost or even leaves or woodchips on top of the soil, those nutrients in the clay become available to fruit trees. Growing in a pot keep in mind the tree will only have what you give it for nutrients.
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I put in Jobes fruit tree spikes in early February. Yes there could be a deficiency. The tree was a bare root grafted rootstock with 3 Asian pear varieties. It was planted in the ground last spring. I simply have a metal tree ring edging around the base against the surrounding gravel bedding. The surface was mulched at planting time.
It’s a very long growing season here (~7 months) so I will wait a bit and see if I get more growth. Just had a very nice prolonged rain yesterday and overnight.
Thanks for the reply.
I will look into amendments for those trace minerals beyond the typical N-P-K.
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@Shibumi
In the meantime if you give it a little magnesium (epsom salts) those leaves should darken to the normal green again.
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Thanks… I’ll give it a shot!
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I have a citrus foliar spray in the mail I was planning to use for my small potted key lime tree. I should be able to use it on the pears and other fruit trees I think.
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@clarkinks
Actually the leaves don’t look that yellow… The color of the new leaves when they are still not full sized are always a lighter green with a bit of a russet color to them early on.
Applied some dissolved epsom salts to the soil just now.
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Like you, I have a young Asian pear trees. I’ve witnessed some of mine to grow in first flush and then stop for some period of time. I would not say it’s abnormal.
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A followup on my young 3-on-1 Asian pear.
I was commenting previously about no additional growth since the initial flush of leaves this spring.
As someone quoted to me, “first year sleep, second year creep (of which I am in), third year leap.”
I’m patient…however I did notice something that looked unusual to me. Normally when you get new growth from the dormant terminal bud from the previous year, you simply see that bud break and grow. On my tree each terminal branch tip from last year has a cluster of several buds.
It looks strange to me. The leaves are healthy, just sitting there quietly collecting sunshine.
My other Asian pear doors not have any new growth that exhibits this phenomena.
See photo of what I’m referring to.
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An update on my little 3-on-1 Asian pear tree.
The tree is still most stagnant for growth though I think a few buds might be pushing again.
Interestingly the third variety (20th Century) that didn’t have a bloom earlier decided to pop a flower - 2 months after the other two blooms on the other two variables! It still has a few petals attached but the flower had been open for about 2 weeks now. It has been covered in ants and a few aphids and other critters and looking today it seems the ovule is swelling so I guess it really is a perfect flower and a self-fertile variety.
Ad mentioned in my earlier posts, the other two varieties (Hosui and Shinseiki) each produced a single flower and they were also pollinated. As was discussed I decided to keep the fruit knowing it takes a bit of the energy from the tree.
That being said the tree isn’t really doing much and the fruit is sizing extremely slowly so it’s in line with the general temperament of the tree.
A few photos. It’s interesting how the Hosui is obviously showing its lovely russet skin.
Knowing the fruit will probably not size and be very tasty I probably still should remove them, but I know that these few fruit are not the reason the tree is not growing this year yet.
Anyway, a curiosity.
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Generally when a tree stops growing like that it’s lack of water. Secondly a lack of nitrogen can contribute. The fertilizer spikes aren’t the best approach. A water soluble fertilizer high in nitrogen would be better. Just be aware to high nitrogen can contribute to fireblight damage.
There’s nowhere near enough fruit on there to slow growth. In good growing conditions Asian pears can grow vigorously with 20x that fruit load.
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Water could be an issue but I treat this tree like my other relatively young trees (I have 7 more the same age or younger) and the rest are growing quite vigorously, though none are pears.
I’m not overly concerned but am curious on the slower growth. Though I say I have treated this tree the same, it is located in a different part of my yard and surrounded by gravel. Other trees are planted in tree ring landscape edging like this and surrounded by limestone.
The tree is suckering a lot… I am waiting for the west coast to get to work to call and ask about the rootstock.
EDIT: it’s on OHxF 333. At least that rootstock is listed as being fire blight resistant.
Good suggestion on the liquid fertilizer. I should see the effect of liquid fertilizer within a few weeks of applying, so if that shows results that makes things a bit easier. Once it gets going I think I’ll have more of an issue with balancing the 3 varieties as the Hosui graft caliper is twice that of the other two varieties.
I agree that a couple of fruit should not make a noticeable difference in growth in and of themselves.
Thanks for the post.
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My 2nd leaf asian pears on betulifolia pushed about 1.5 to 2 ft of growth in last 2 months or so. They are now slowing down. I have been applying both water and human-derived liquid urea about every 1.5 to 2 weeks.
I do have one KG pear not doing anything with just a very top pushing a set of leaves with no extension in limb length. This tree had mangled roots when it was planted last year bare root.
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I’m going to hit my tree with some liquid fertilizer this coming week to wake it up, hopefully. That should point at the issue if it does respond.
I’ll have to admit I read your reply at 2 AM and in my half awake state was trying to decide to either laugh at what might have been a euphemism for peeing in your garden or waking up enough to look up how to make urea from human urine.
Happy growing.
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So between fertilizing, watering, and adding a bit more soil (some roots were exposed probably exacerbating the sucker issue), I am seeing some new growth on my 3-on-1 pear. One long shoot on my least vigorous graft, thankfully. Just spent some time jetting off the plethora of aphids from all the new growth spots. Too hot at the moment to spray neem.
And funnily enough I got another pear to germinate, this last one a few months after the first two. A single bloom on each of the three varieties yielded a pear for each of the three varieties (the first two bloomed together). I find that fascinating and humorous.
Now I know a perfect flower (the late bloom) pollinates itself. The last bloom on the Hosui had no other blooms anywhere on the tree or the neighborhood, so it did the pollination job by all the ants that were farming the aphids.
I always wondered if self-fertile or semi-fertile trees pollinated just between different blooms on the same tree or from perfect flowers onto themselves. It’s probably a combination as I don’t know if said trees produce all perfect flowers.
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Good that you got some more growth again in another flush. Mine stopped putting out growing tips except the Dasui Li Pear, is described as a hybrid and extremely vigorous.
The rest of the asian pears put about 1.5-2.0 ft of growth in first flush, are are about to have a second flush soon. You area ahead of me in the season, so I think what we’re observing about asian pears is normal.
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I only have one other pear tree and honestly I don’t remember how it grew the first few years.
I’m probably projecting my expectations based on stone fruit trees I am growing. For instance my Flavor Grenade Pluot put on 4-5 feet of growth on each branch the first year in the ground here…with no soil amendments at all. This second year I pruned the main branches back 3 feet and each now has out our 4-5 laterals, the longest already 3+ feet
Yes in southern Louisiana the growing season started at the beginning of March.
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My Flavor Supreme I essentially cut back into a stump at 2nd leaf due to severe deer damage, and it still put out 6+ ft of growth on 6 separate branches.
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Update:
So I ended up picking the single Shinseiki pear. It’s small which is not unexpected on such a small tree. It came off when I lifted it a bit. Underripe so not very sweet with a bit it an astringent aftertaste. I have been lifting it to see if it separated for a while now so I may well have weakened the stem.
It will be nice in a few years when I can comfortably pick one to test and still have many left on the tree.
Also I’ve gotten good new growth as this was the genesis of this thread in the beginning.
I was getting suckering on the tree and noticed some of the roots had become exposed from soil settling. I added soil and a liquid fertilizer and that did the job. New growth and no more suckers.
I suspect exposing the rootstock roots to air lead to the suckering.
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