You should edit your user posting name to indicate what zone you live in. Most gardening solutions will require a location to be appropriate. Al

Sakura, relax, the odds are highly in favor of you not having any FB issues. I think it would be a waste of time to be pre-emptive in treating this disease if you haven't observed it yet on your property. You don't even know if your A pears are susceptable varieties.

That said, life has its risks no matter what you do but you have to limit your investments to what you know you need. Bearing age APs shouldn't respond excessively vigorously to even large branch remvoval if there are no stubbs and whole branches were removed to the trunk or another branch of similar size. Bearing age trees will continue to invest most of their energy to fruit production.

I only hope you have no children or your anxiety would make you and them pretty crazy.

calistoga, I live in city of Philadelphia and my zone is 6.

harvestman, you are right.
I need to stop worry so much but the reason why I hate to lose my Asian pear trees is because that was real hell of trying to plant in concreate like heavy clay soil by using shovel.
I dug up little and filled with water to soak over night.
It took several days to dig large deep hole to plant these two Asian pear trees.
My another reason is many years back, these Asian pear trees had fire blight disease and I am well aware of this disease.

Ah, so you've had FB. That throws everything in a different light. Here in NY state there is a phone # to call that the Cornell adviser leaves a message on every business day during early growing season. The message will include warnings of weather that may induce FB when it is coming. Maybe PA's ag University has a similar service. Otherwise I think it will be almost impossible for someone like you to really keep up with the weather and spray in an affective way to control FB.

harvestman, I asked many people about prevention of fire blight but they all said there is no way for us to prevent this disease.
I stop worrying about my Asian pear trees because if they are not going to make it, I can plant new trees to replace.
Oh, I even don't want to think about digging that concreate like hard clay soil.
Maybe using tiller can help little.

Sakura, Fireblight is a fickle disease that depends on certain climatic conditions. You might go many years with no problems.

If you stay in touch with local experts you can find out from them what steps to take- local extension agents or good nurseries should be able to tell you what you might be able to do.

Sometimes you can spray with antibiotics to prevent an outbreak. It also helps to avoid stimulating lush, new growth when outbreaks are likely to happen. That's why you shouldn't fetilyze your pears, and it's also why you have to be careful when you prune, since pruning can stimulate new growth.

But that doesn't mean you should never prune; it just means you should never prune without being mindful of the fireblight issue.

I hope you have good luck with your pears and that you don't have to replant. That is very discouraging. But it can be done, and in fact, I'm going to replant an apricot next spring because my old one died. So of course if we have to we can. And now I have something new to look forward to!

Best to you,

Mark

There are several things you can do as a preventative measure for fireblight. For starters, look for any fireblight cancers on your trees. Anywhere there is any oozing, you need to remove the cancers and discard properly, as in the trash in a sealed lastic bag.

Second, you can use Serenade on your trees to establish healthy bacteria cultures - it's like Yoghurt establishing healthy bacteria in your digestive system. The bacteria cultures in Serenade are really good for stimulating the plant immune systems as well.

Third, there are sprays available that target fireblight in the Spring when the trees are blooming. If it's raining or drizzling during bloom time, you need to spray the blossoms every 3 to 7 days. I forget the name of the new fireblight spray, it's also a type of bacteria that occupies the entry point for fireblight bacteria and as such it keeps the fireblight bacteria from entering. But it needs to be present already before the arrival of fireblight.

I live in a mild climate and our Fall apple bloom is underway on the low chill varieties, and we have a massive tropical storm heading our way so I will be spraying in the next couple of days.