Growing Kieffer, Moonglow, Ayer’s, Bartlett
Planted Ellen White Method, March 2022
Coastal,NC zone 8b
Sand soil prior to planting supplementation
Zero Spring flowers
Tree growth impressive, 7-10 times original girth
Pruned in deep winters
pH= 6.5 - high phosphorus P-I = 117. Below optimum Potassium K-I=31
HM%=3.67. W/V =1.13. CEC= 16.2 Mn-I=35 Zn-I=154 Cu-I=54. S-I=34
Mulched with wood chips
Flowers do come on in late Summer and I pull immature fruit off in Nov 3 years in a row now.
Recommendations have been all over the place, here are a few
Root pruning, stressing the trees by whacking on the trunks with a 2x4, Planting garlic around the trees in late Fall.
I have nurtured these trees and admit being a total novice fruit grower. Purchased saplings from Lowe’s and the tags said they would pollinate together
I just joined this forum tonight and am excited to get feedback from educated, passionate and experienced growers.
Thanks in advance
God Bless!
hm, how many chill hours do you get where you are? That would be my first guess for issues of bloom time, oh also how long have they been in the ground?
Chill hours average 420-700
March will be four years since I planted the 5-6ft saplings.
They leaf out well, early but zero flowers
FYI, winter pruning is probably not helping right now. Winter pruning is really good for encouraging vigorous growth, but what you actually want is for your trees to settle down a bit. If you feel they are in need of some shaping, summer pruning would be a more productive approach.
Also, you mentioned that flowers come on in late summer. That’s a sign that the trees have probably stopped growth (or at least slowed down) and produced buds that were intended to stay dormant until the following spring when they wake up again. However, something is triggering them to wake those buds up to push a second round of growth that then doesn’t have time to make the next year’s over wintering flower buds.
Get your county or state Ag recommendations for raising the potash, plus getting the phosphate under control without inducing alkalinity in your soil. It might already be on your soil report.
Johann makes good recommendations about pruning. I’m wondering if you are accidently removing flowering wood.
Boron deficiency can cause issues with flowering. A tiny amount is enough for each tree. Get some 20 muleteam borax and give each tree 1 level teaspoon spread well around the trunk.
It is very likely your trees have too much nitrogen. Excess can prevent flowering, trigger excessive vegetative growth, and cause abnormal limb structure.
Other than that, the varieties are inappropriate to your climate. Hood, Biscamp, and LeConte would work better.
Boron deficiency is the prime reason we added biochar to the mix. As sandy loams have very little ability to fix boron.
thanks for the shoutout, I’ll do some more advanced soil testing to see whats up with mine. I keep forgetting :S
I should have been here years ago!
Let me thank all forum participants for reading and some even taking the time to make recommendations. Never the less if others have read our comments and find similar experiences please contribute to my thought processes, even if you think it’s trivial.
Bless you for that.
I had already decided to suspend pruning for 2025-2026 winter season, so again thanks for the recommendations accordingly.
A 36”x36”x36’ hole did not leave more than maybe the topsoil as part of the backfill supplementation. I really wanted these trees find a happy home for their maturity process.
That part really has been successful as trunk growth has been impressive. They are beautiful trees even without fruit. These are the first trees planted on the property and I have done more extensive research on the planting of my figs, plums, peaches and blueberries. Hardware store specimens were not an optimal choice selection. Here we are, so even a diminished harvest of four trees for my wife and I would potentially produce enough fruit for some pies, and perhaps canning. Pears do make the best (apple pies) lol.
Agg agent was really no help, so any recommendations for phosphorus depletion would be appreciated.
About boron, what organic additive would be optimal? Biochar? Borax?
A little about myself. I am retired and this garden and mini orchard is a passion that is stimulating as well as therapeutic. My faith in Christ Jesus carries me through these earthly setbacks and if these are my problems in life, I am BLESSED.
Awaiting your feedback, your admiring pupil Sevenal 
Biochar merely holds nutrients in place. Borax and Boric Acid solutions and powders are your cheapest option. There are also handy granules on the market.
My suggestions would be to not fertilize with anything, bend limbs down, and only prune a little in the summer (summer prune). Kieffer and Ayers at my location fruit on younger trees than Moonglow. I mostly grow Asian pears now. They all fruit early.
Some trees just take longer to fruit than others. On the average,
pear trees take about five years to start producing. Take Auburn’s advice. The blooms that you ARE getting are probably just rat tail blooms.
Rootstock makes a diffrence too. Some stocks take a decade.
Thanks all, the only thing I have done this fall is clear any grasses. And put down about 6 inches of wood chips that have some pine straw from this spring. Many Gratitudes
One last question I would like to paint the lower trunks with tree paint approved for fruit trees. Can that change any of these scenarios?
Tree paint should be white latex paint mixed about half and half with water and applied to the trunk of the tree. It prevents sun damage in winter. The sequence is that a tree is frozen overnight, the next day bright sunshine thaws the bark usually on the south or southwest side of the tree. The bark expands separating from the stem. The bark then desiccates and dies. Paint the trunk white and this does not happen.
I tested my soil. It was very low in boron. I did the math, about how much to put per square foot, etc. It’s in the book, “The Intelligent Gardener” . One of my fruit trees bloomed after that and has since. I’m not remembering which one it was now.
John S
PDX OR
Planted March 2022 means your trees are four years old (it is counted from number of growing seasons since transplanting). Next summer, they will be in their fifth year. Many pears don’t start flowering or bearing until they are 5+ years old. If it’s a full sized rootstock (no idea what is sold at lowes) it could take longer.
Look at your trees and see if they have fruiting spurs. Make sure you’re not pruning them off or cutting the end off of every fruiting lateral - I saw a thread once where the person was cutting off all their fruiting wood. This article: The 1-2-3 rule of pruning - Good Fruit Grower has a good explanation with pictures (scroll to the end).
I’ve been using mule team borax because it was cheap and easy to find. I’ll look in my notebook later to see exactly what I was doing but it seemed to help my pears. Granted my soil is completely different from yours, but I also have a boron issue.
Something I learned on this forum is that when a tree is making wood and leaves it’s not making fruit. At first, you want to pull the flowers off to let the trees grow. Then, you have to start reducing the vigor and encouraging fruiting. There are lots of threads on different ways that people have done that.
I think it’s worth investigating the chill hours because @snarfing and @Fusion_power seem concerned. They’re far more experienced than I am. How coastal are you? A model that works inland might not be a good estimate of your chill hours.
Also, I know that apples often have misstated chill hours or the chill hour model doesn’t work very well for them in low chill situations. I don’t know if that’s true for pears. @Richard might know. He is very experienced and grows a lot of stuff in a low-chill situation.
This is what I have recorded for those pears
Bartlett 500-600
Kieffer 200-300
Moonglow 400-500
Ayer’s maybe:400-600
@Sevenal @benthegirl
One person’s low chill is another’s medium chill 
. My present location is cold-hardiness zone 10b, with a cool, overcast Spring that lasts until early May.
Two decades ago, a member here (applenut) tested many apple cultivars in a SoCal low-chill environment. It was determined that apple chill hours are nonsense. The results were published. For the past decade he has been assisting farmers in Africa with apples.
Note, however, that a warmer winter does not necessarily mean sufficient degree days, and it might mean multiple flowering periods. My experience has been that apple favorites Gordon and White Winter Pearmain for 9b do not properly ripen at my present location – although they worked fine south of here without the marine layer. After trialing several cultivars, King David and Black Limbertwig are doing well so far.
Several deciduous fruit tree species planted from bareroot saplings do not start significant blooming until 4th year in the ground or a suitably large container. The old adage “the volume of harvest is proportional to the volume of roots” holds true for them. But checking for flower buds every 2-3 days for months and finding none is concerning.
Pears are a domesticated fruit, with several genetic backgrounds depending on cultivar. There are pear cultivars that have serious chill requirements. Here in western San Diego county, I have trialed pears for both climate suitability and fireblight resistance. Our fireblight strain (in this climate) rarely affects apples but is vicious with pears. Hood pear has worked extremely well. I am currently trialing Warren.
In summary, I believe experts in your region can provide good advice for your negligent pears. I look forward to reading more about your fruit growing adventures.
Sounds like good advice/observations. Thanks
Do you top dress the biochar?