Gadenin日本語Get the appWhere a pear carries its fruit
Pears fruit on spurs: short, stubby, ringed shoots that live and crop for eight to ten years or more. A shoot that grew this summer sits quiet next year, forms a fat flower bud, and starts a spur that then produces every season. So anything you cut is a decision about several future crops, not one.
Learn the two buds on sight before you pick up pruners. A growth bud is small, pointed and pressed flat against the shoot. A fruit bud is fat, rounded and stands out from the wood on a short stalk. In winter you can read next spring's crop off the tree at a glance, and you can avoid removing it.
Pears spur more freely than apples and, left alone, build congested clusters of spurs on old wood. Every bud in a crowded spur system still tries to flower, which is how you end up with a heavy set of small, poorly colored fruit. Thinning old spur clusters is as much a part of pear pruning as cutting shoots.
Winter pruning: the framework
Prune a free-standing pear in full dormancy, from leaf fall to bud movement, on a dry day. Dormant cuts push growth, so this is the pass that builds and renews structure. Aim for an open center with four to six well-spaced main limbs, and enough space between branches that light reaches the inside of the tree; wood in permanent shade stops setting fruit buds and eventually dies.
Take out the three obvious categories first and stop to look before doing anything else: dead, damaged and diseased wood; branches crossing and rubbing; and anything growing straight into the middle of the tree. On many neglected pears that is the entire job and no further cutting is needed.
Never remove more than a quarter of the canopy in one winter. A pear answers hard cutting with vertical water shoots, and the harder you cut the more it sends, which is how a tree gets steadily worse each year in the hands of someone trying to reduce it. Spread a big reduction over three or four winters, cutting back to a side branch at least a third of the thickness of what you remove.
| What you see | When to cut | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Vertical water shoots from a limb | Summer, and again in winter if needed | Rub or pull out while soft; cutting hard in winter multiplies them |
| Crowded spur clusters on old wood | Winter | Remove the oldest and weakest spurs, leave two or three strong ones per cluster |
| Branch crossing and rubbing another | Winter | Remove the weaker or worse-placed one at its origin |
| Bare, unproductive old limb | Winter, over two or three years | Cut back to a younger side branch to renew the arm |
| Suckers from below the graft | Whenever seen | Pull or cut flush at the root; these are quince, not pear |
| Long unbranched leader on a young tree | Winter | Head back by a third to force side branches at the height you want them |
Summer pruning: control and light
Summer cuts slow a tree down rather than pushing it. Once this year's shoots have gone woody and stiff at the base, in mid to late summer, shorten new side shoots to three or four leaves above the basal cluster and shoots growing from existing spurs to one leaf. This is the standard treatment for trained forms and the fastest way to convert extension growth into fruit buds.
The second reason to prune in summer is light on the fruit. Pears color and finish their sugars in direct sun, and a shaded fruit stays green, hard and flavorless. Taking out a few leafy shoots over a heavy cluster six weeks before picking makes a visible difference to the fruit underneath.
Trained trees, cordons, espaliers and fans, are pruned mainly in summer and only lightly in winter. That balance is what holds them to their wires: dormant pruning would drive them off the framework every spring.
Thinning the fruit, and the cuts not to make
Pears set in clusters of four to seven and hold far more than they can finish. Three or four weeks after petal fall the tree drops its own surplus; wait until that natural drop is over, then thin what remains to one or two fruit per cluster, four to six inches (10-15 cm) apart along the branch. Keep the best-shaped fruit, not necessarily the biggest at the time.
Thinning is not optional on a good year. An unthinned pear gives small fruit, breaks limbs under the weight, and then flowers poorly the following spring because it exhausted itself; that is how a tree falls into cropping heavily only every other year. Thinning in a heavy year is what restores an annual habit.
Two cuts to avoid: never cut flush to the trunk, which removes the branch collar the tree seals from; and never leave a stub, which dies back and lets rot in. Cut just outside the collar's swelling. Leave the wound uncovered and unpainted; wound sealants trap moisture and slow the tree's own compartmentalising.
Note the date of each winter pass, how much you removed and from where. When water shoots erupt the following summer you will want to know whether you cut a quarter of the tree or half of it, and memory is not reliable across a season.