Not Bas's method exactly, although he's been a very important mentor to me in terms of training technique for over 15 years. He's the one who guided me towards pruning by ratios and taught me about putting branches where I want them by partially girdling the trunk just above latent buds in early spring (not in person, but through his articles, two in Pomona that were totally wonderful).

I read the same article and it really doesn't seem much improvement over what I've done for years, which is to seriously thin spur wood- removing about half of it, every dormant pruning. His suggestion that spurs on the upper side of branches grow bigger pears has influenced me this season, however.

Asian pears here in the northeast have a tendency to spur up and runt out a bit, so thinning spur wood encourages adequate vegetative pencils to feed the fruit. It also allows me to get decent size on the trees.

I wish Bas van den Ende would write an entire book about managing pears and apples because he seems the most knowledgeable man I've ever had the privilidge of learning from about the management of pomes.

fruitnut,

Never tried this method, but sounds interesting. My only concern is you thin out half the buds then the freeze takes it's share.

I've always waited for the natural fruit drop, then thinned the fruit with my Felcos. I'm only talking two Asin pears.

2009
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Eric

I never have a freeze take a share, although excessively wet cool weather sometimes creates a blossum blight that has drasticly reduced the crop. The trees are so productive that removing half the spurs still leaves much too much potential bearing.

I agree with Harvestman. Nip the spurs before they can flower then thin after blooming. The other option, at least per my experience in Central Texas, was to graft onto ohf#333 which greatly reduced tree size, spur and shoot growth but unfortunately fruit size also.

Scape

I have thinned the spurs in prior years. They just grow back way more than needed. Unfortunately in this climate Asian pears bloom during frost season. Frost danger changes these things. Last year I had nearly zero crop due to freeze. If I didn't have to worry about frost I'd thin the spurs as per the Good Fruit article. I agree that's the first best option where appropriate.

Bas's advice and career is about managing thousands of acres of fruit. This particular technique would probably be more useful when you're talking about that kind of workload. I only go through the trees I manage once during the dormant season and by the time buds are where Bas suggests thinning I'm involved in other tasks. Spur thinning works well enough- no matter how you prune you still have to thin these buggers- just do it before the stems get hard.