Your pears were fermenting on the tree. Pears tend to turn brown from the inside out.
Sure looks like a seedling. @BlueBerry gave you a good suggestion about grafting, just above.
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Whoa! Pear trees want to “reach for the sky” but 60-feet is way up there.
I asked someone with a lot of experience with fruit about what to do with an over height pear tree, and his advice was “Don’t let it get that big!”
I have an Anjou pear that 12 or so years after planting from a garden-center potted tree reached to about 30 feet and the past few years I have been taking branches off the top, trying to stay within the “remove no more than 30%” rule that Extension advises. My pruning “rig” is four connecting 6-foot lengths of the Jameson poles that I top with a Fanno blade.
I got two of the yellow high-voltage resistant poles for the bottom and two of the lightweight blue poles for the top, but given that you really shouldn’t work anywhere near electric lines, I think I would go with four of the lightweight blue poles that prove to be quite strong. This equipment is not cheap, but I have a lot of non-fruit trees to control. The four poles plus me gives up to a 30-foot reach, but if your tree goes up to 60, think about hiring a contractor, especially if they can reach those trees with a bucket truck.
The thing you can do with a tree too tall to pick clean is pick the ones you can reach and knock the remaining ones down with a long stick or pruning pole. The ones you pick off the ground can be peeled for eating, especially if you don’t have animal scat on the ground, fed to animals or wildlife (away from your orchard not to encourage them), or composted by burial under about a foot of dirt to discourage propagation of fruit pests. But 60 feet is out of reach for doing that.
That fruit looks beautiful, you are getting advice on when to pick it so it isn’t rotting on the tree, but whatever you decide, stay safe.
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Right! 12 feet is high enough, and 15 feet is just way too high.
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Why do you think I’m suggesting any are?
Your post #15 after my 14 and before my 16…you mention Idigenous pears being the non-Asian ones.
I see you haven’t edited it out (yet).
If you have a legitimate question, quote my words and I will explain my meaning. I don’t understand your question or what you are curious about. I reread what I wrote and couldn’t match it with your question. I hadn’t noticed the contrast in the two pear trees in question.
My point about indigenous trees was only that large native trees are often honored and protected around here and that usually doesn’t happen with other species, although, now that I think about it, some very old apple trees have been so honored. However, I doubt a Norway spruce or maple will ever gain that kind of respect.
I just was indirectly stating the opinion that it’s OK to take down big beautiful trees if their liabilities are greater than their assets. In my business it is often necessary to remove forest trees to make room for orchard trees.
However, almost everyone is reluctant to take down a really old, beautiful oak, maple or beech. I’ve taken down quite a few to open up my property for my orchard and nursery and it always creates a certain pang of conscience. Taking down those pears probably wouldn’t as much.
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No biggie…rather than point out that there are no ‘idiginous’ pear trees in the USA as your former post seems to say…
I opted to give you a chance to explain.
If it were me, I’d wait till it goes dormant, then drop the entire tree and hope it sends shoots in the spring. Then thin those in early summer and graft in the following spring… assuming that it sends any shoots up at all. Those multi trunks are hard to deal with. Well to be completely honest if it were me I’d probably just consider it ornamental and leave it as is, it is pretty impressive.
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I’ve got a lot of research to do, they told me the insects were bad in Florida but I had no idea. I thought it was just the fruit flies getting my raspberries but I found tons of cockroaches on them last night as well as stink bugs. The cockroaches are horrible thank goodness they’re not inside my home. I might have to get my property sprayed but I’m definitely going to talk to some property owners down here. I’d hate to have this problem on all the blackberries I just planted this year next spring. I was wanting to put some RV spots on my property maybe I need to talk to a bug expert and see what the larger RV Parks do.
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Yikes! I’ve been mostly leaving my plants alone and leaving nature on its own for things like aphids. But now I’m afraid to go scope it out at night because of what I might find.
If you aren’t using the trees and they are dropping fruit you can’t immediately get rid of, I would take them out. Anything to reduce the food for bugs in the yard. Then I would probably put something like tanglefoot on the trunks of all my smaller trees next year to keep the crawly bugs from getting into them. Not sure what you can do for the cane fruit.
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Not sure what your current rain situation is. A DE fogger or sprinkling may work well if it isn’t raining all the time. Most crawlies don’t like DE.
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Wish I never saw these photos, like a horror flick for fruit! I’ll grab a handful of reds and golds tonight and have to think twice about eating them without a wash.
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