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Fruit & Orchards

Pear tree Pruning

14 years ago

Still looking for advice on pruning pear trees. Bought some semi dwarf pears (Anjou) that are now 15 feet tall. Can I cut them back to about 10-12 feet without damaging them? There will no longer be a central leader. I would like to train them as open vase type trees. Anyone have any experience with this issue? Not a lot of internet help. Thanks.

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Comments (4)

jellyman
14 years ago
Sconticut:

I am not certain what kind of help you are looking for here, since you seem to know what you want to do. You don't say how old the pear trees are, but if they are 15 feet tall, it must be a few years. Have you done any branch spreading? That's how I prepared my pear tree for open vase form, using the central leader as a stop for one end of the spreaders. Eventually, when the branches were in place, I cut off the leader completely. If you want to be able to reach the branches with the low-ladder, no-ladder method, the lateral branches should start at about 4-5 feet up the trunk. I leave 5 or 6 branches around the trees, and it took about 3 years before they were spread and in place so I could cut off the leader.

You can prune a healthy pear tree just about any time of the year and it will pop back strongly. The danger is a lot of unwanted vertical growth from the lateral branches, which you can control to some extent by pruning in late midsummer, or immediately after picking the fruit. This will moderate the vigor of the tree and increase fruitfulness. Do not prune in the dormant season, or small vertical branches will emerge like grass the following spring.

Don't let the trees continue to grow upward, which serves no useful purpose. If you are satisfied with the placement and height of the laterals you already have, you can prune out the central leader right now.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
alan haigh
14 years ago
A lot of good advice can be contradictory of other good advice which can make things confusing. For instance, I have no problem doing structural pruning of pears during dormancy and just wiping off the resultant surge of sprouting shoots during early summer. Perhaps this works fine for me because fireblight is not as much an issue in the northeast as it is further south.

Is FB the reason you manage pears without dormant pruning, Don? I've always wondered if using exclusively summer pruning during dry periods might help control FB in pears but have never seen any corraborating research.

I have seen research of apple pruning that showed that summer pruning did not reduce returning shoot growth the following spring (Dr. Farree). But this was done on apple trees on dwarfing rootstock.
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Clare: Open center, hands down. Your newly-planted trees are already the same height as my pear trees that have been in the ground for 15 years -- and it's not because of the rootstock, it's pruning and training. I would not have purchased and planted trees of this size, since I prefer to begin training well before they achieve that height. Horizontal branches are fine; vigorous central growth is not. Tying the branches down is one technique, branch spreaders is another. To control growth, try pruning in late summer. European pears are often slow to begin bloom and fruiting, but I have found that training to a vase shape and pruning in summer reduces the time required. Nurseries often like to sell very tall trees at premium prices since many people believe taller is better. The opposite is the case. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
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Gardengal: You will have to be a little more specific about what you fail to understand about pruning. The "best way" to prune trees down to a manageable height is to prune them down to a manageable height. I can't be with you, nor can the others, to tell you each limb to remove or shorten, so you will have to figure out some of this for yourself. You might begin by visiting some websites that cover the fundamentals of pruning. As you describe your trees, it sounds like they were allowed to grow as pear trees tend to do, which is pretty much straight up. Spreading of branches and control pruning normally begins while the trees are much younger, and well before they reach 15-20 feet in height. It will not be impossible for you to restore your trees to a better shape for fruit production and overall care, but it will not be easy. Nursery catalogs often describe their trees as "dwarf" or "semi-dwarf" and they turn out to be anything but. You have to base your care decisions on what you actually see, not the catalog descriptions. Pear trees must be kept down to a height where you can thin and pick the fruit, and spray if that should be necessary. Normally, the maximum height to perform these tasks comfortably is about 12 feet, but 10 feet or even less can be better. As Herbert suggests, the best shape for a fruiting pear is low and spreading. The small size of your pears is due no doubt to the fact that you do not thin them, which would be impossible on such tall trees. To achieve decent size and quality, pears should be thinned to one per blossom cluster. I don't know what is responsible for the mottled condition of your pears, but you may have the beginnings of pear psylla, which results in blackening of both the leaves and fruit. Punch "pear psylla" into your Google search and read up about it. If it looks familiar, you should thoroughly spray your trees with dormant oil at least twice this coming winter season, a task that will be greatly facilitated if you bring down the height of the trees. You can begin your pruning right now, or at any time during the coming winter season. I am sure you can get further suggestions on pruning here, but you will have to tell us what you want to know with a little more precision. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA
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I have a comice pear tree that is overgrown (probably 12 feet tall). I don't think it has ever been pruned before. There's no main trunk that goes all the way to the top. Instead, the main trunk goes up to around 4' and then as it continues up, it successively branches into 4 "trunks", all pointing vertically. Also, there's another smaller comice pear tree growing out of the ground right next (touching) to the trunk of the original comice pear tree. That sucker(?) is around 7' tall. I don't know how old the original pear tree is (it came with the house), but it bore 6 fruit last year. How do I prune the original comice pear tree such that it is not so tall? What do I do with the smaller pear tree growing right next to it? Do I chop it off at ground level or try to dig it out? The cherry tree (came with the house too) was trained to be an espalier, but then neglected, so that the main trunk and topmost branches shot upwards until it reached about 10'. How do I prune the cherry tree? Can anyone help? Thanks so much!
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aloha10
Original Author
14 years ago
Thank you very much for your advice. I found it helpful. Trees were planted as three foot bare root specimens five years ago. Yes I have done lateral branch spreading as far up as I can reach with a short ladder. Your suggestions about pruning during the growing season has resulted in my doing a bit more research on the net and I have found some other info. I was under the assumption that fruit trees could only be pruned in the freezing cold of Jan. and Feb.while freezing ones nether side off. Makes life easier for one approaching the Oct. of life. Why in the hell do old men plant fruit trees, anyway?
Sconticut
brendan_of_bonsai
14 years ago
Because young men can't afford too, and by gosh someone needs to do it.

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