Five Pear Trees

Fruit trees, specifically pear trees, usually are standard, semi-dwarf or dwarf in size. Dwarf trees are standard stems that have been grafted onto dwarfing rootstock to keep them short. Having different sizes accommodates different needs of the gardener. A standard tree may be majestic and ornamental while a dwarf tree is easy to reach and fits into small spaces. Semi-dwarf trees are both more productive per acre while being easier to spray harvest from. There are basically two different ways to prune pear trees, the right way and the wrong way. I have been guilty of the second and am constantly trying to achieve the first.

Espaliered fruit trees are usually dwarf and trained against a wall for support. I didn’t have a wall so a trellis sufficed. It is an interesting arrangement and does produce edible fruit every year.

Pears have a growth habit of reaching for the sky. That becomes a problem for the average home gardener (me) when it comes to spraying and picking. So this spring I pruned the tree first to shorten it a bit and then to open it up to allow more sun into the interior. We will see how the tree responds to this attempt to tame it.

I planted this Bartlett pear tree about forty years ago. It is a standard size tree and in my ignorance I tried prune it to stay low enough to spray and pick from. I formed the branches into an umbrella shape. The tree doesn’t like being in an umbrella shape. So every year it sends an awful lot of suckers (thin stems) skyward from the top. so every year I climb up and prune them off. This is NOT the way pear trees are supposed to be grown, Well, it’s too late now and in fact the tree produces a nice crop of pears most every year. Besides, I’m kind of attached to it after all of these years.

This picture is of Bradford pear trees lining my neighbor’s driveway. The purpose of planting a Bradford pear is strictly ornamental. These trees do not produce edible fruit and it is a good thing, because they can grow thirty to fifty feet tall and harvesting fruit from the top would be impossible. Their flowers smell kind of like tunafish in a can, but these are away from anybody’s nose so that isn’t a problem. One problem that this tree has though, is that it’s growth structure leads to branches splitting and falling to the ground. Fortunately these trees aren’t near where anybody could be bopped on the head. So for now we can admire the dense flush of flowers, at a distance.

When we moved into our house in 1977, this doubled trunked tree was already about twenty five feet high. It didn’t flower at that time and so I didn’t quite know what to make of it. A few years later it attained the age of flowering and fruiting. I was surprised to find it produced little, round, sweet pears with a very tough skin. Trying to use the fruit was more work than it was worth. As the years went on, the tree grew taller and produced more fruit. It has attractive flowers in the spring and nice red foliage in the fall so I haven’t had the heart to cut it down, yet. The branches are brittle and break, falling to the ground or hanging up in the canopy for a year or two. The pears become so numerous when they fall I have had to use a snow shovel to gather them up some years. I finally discovered that this is a Perry pear tree. It is used for pear cider in the UK. I tried making cider with it one year but the cider had a strong negative impact on my GI tract, so no more of that! Is this the year that I will cut it down? My neighbor might like to turn the trunk into bowls on his lathe. We will see.