Gardening Jill, It's good to see some other ideas on later posts. After reading a lot of posts on Milehighgirl's link it gave me a few ideas as to what caused your tree to take the multi trunk form it now has. Someone suggested that the original graft failed and the rootstock sent up multiple sprouts. That being said you have great rootstock to graft new varieties onto. I would still remove the portion to the left entirely. It looks very weak and will probably remove itself soon anyway. I would keep the two trunks on the right. Is that where the splitting is that you are first talked about? If it is here's how I thought about taking care of that problem. The front trunk with the hole that the birds nest in I would cut down to 6' high cut at a sloping 45% so the water drains away from the two splits.There's no way that the tree can collar all of that wood. So just paint it with an outdoor paint. Just like any wood you would need to do that on a regular basis to keep rot out. In the meantime you have a great root stock to work from. You have removed the weight from the trunk that's causing the split. Next year you could also remove the other side if you want to lower it as well. It's a multi year project. In bonsai culture they use thread grafting to insert branches any where on the trunk that they need them. This is done by drilling a hole through the trunk and threading a branch through the hole. If you use this principle you can get new scions to grow on the now lower trunk. You wouldn't have to drill all the way through to graft your new type of pear. I've not done any grafting myself so others could help you with that process. Milehighgirl, Please post recent pictures of your pear project tree.

This question would be better asked on the Fruit forum. Rodney Here is a link that might be useful: Fruit & Orchards Forum

th102 now is not the ideal time to prune your tree. Having said that. It will still leaf out and produce fruit if you prune it now. The longer you wait the more sap will be flowing thought the tree and the tree will lose more of its energy due to losing more sap. Keep in mind that pruning while the tree is no longer dormant will be a shock to the tree. Thus it will likely appear to stop the active growing process for 1-3 weeks. Your fruiting and ripening cycle this season will also likely be delayed/slowed by roughly the same amount of time.

Your plant is wilting because there isn't enough oxygen in the grow medium to allow roots to function normally/ efficiently. You can remove the plant from the pot and set it on some combination of newspapers, rags, paper bags, towels, ..... which will pull the excess water out of the grow medium. After a few hours, return the plant to the pot and then to its cache pot. When you water, you should water at the sink until the entire soil column is wet, then allow the pot the plant is in to drain thoroughly. Tipping the pot at a 45* angle will force an additional measure of any excess water the soil holds out of the drain hole. Compare B to A below to see how this works. The main pot (one the plant is in) should never be allowed to sit in the effluent that exits the drain hole after you water, that's why you should water at the sink and allow the pot to drain there; or, make sure the pot is up on some type of blocking so salts in the waste water that exits the drain hole have no pathway by which to make their way back into the soil. Determining appropriate watering intervals is a key element of a good care regimen; and, if you're watering correctly, the plant should be fertilized about every 4th or 5th time you water in winter and every 3rd or 4th time in summer. Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 is an excellent fertilizer for houseplants, and provides a complete nutritional supplementation from a single source. A good way to determine appropriate watering intervals: Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al