Pear tree

Light and exposure

The pear tree demands full sun, even more than the apple tree, to ripen its fruit and give it sugar. Reserve the warmest, brightest spot in the garden for it, avoiding shade and cold hollows where the air stagnates.

Where springs stay cool, growing it trained against a well-exposed wall is a real ally. The wall stores the heat of the day and gives it back at night, which somewhat protects the early flowering from frost and pushes the fruit towards ripeness. A pear espaliered on the sunniest face of the house gives, where the summer is short, distinctly better pears than an isolated tree out in the open wind.

Watering

Once well established in open ground, the pear tree usually makes do with the rain that falls. But it is more sensitive than the apple tree to summer drought, especially on quince rootstock whose roots stay shallow: a spell of dryness while the fruit is swelling gives small and sometimes gritty pears.

So water young trees and trained forms generously during dry summers, aiming at the base and spacing the applications to encourage the roots to go down. A mulch keeps the soil cool and cuts down the watering chore. Along a wall, the soil dries faster than out in the open country, keep that in mind.

Soil and repotting

The pear tree likes a deep, cool, well-drained soil, rather more fertile and less chalky than the one that suits the apple tree. Soils that are too chalky make it yellow through iron deficiency. Deep loams suit it perfectly, provided water does not sit in winter.

At planting, dig a wide hole, loosen it and work in mature compost, without ever burying the graft point, which stays above the soil. On heavy, wet ground, plant on a slight mound to keep the roots away from standing water and prevent root suffocation.

Temperature and humidity

The pear tree is hardy to around -25 °C on dormant wood and comes through the winters of USDA zones 4 to 8 without trouble. Like the apple tree, it needs a good spell of winter cold, several hundred hours below 7 °C, to flower properly when mild weather returns; under too warm a winter, flowering scatters and the crop with it.

Its Achilles heel is its early flowering. The pear tree flowers about a week before the apple tree, on the first mild days after winter, at a time when late frosts are still frequent. A night at -2 °C on the open flowers scorches the organs and can bring down the year’s harvest, which explains why some years are generous and others almost nil. That is where a sheltered exposure and training against a wall come into their own.

Pruning and upkeep

Formative pruning, in winter and out of frost, builds the framework in the first years. The pear tree lends itself particularly well to trained forms, espalier or cordon, which you lead patiently along a wall or a wire. You keep an airy structure that lets the light in.

Maintenance winter pruning removes dead wood and cluttering branches, and renews the fruiting wood, the famous spurs and crowned twigs that carry the fruit buds. A summer prune calms over-vigorous trees, curbs the watershoots and exposes the fruit to the sun for better ripeness. The pear tree tends to raise its branches vertically: bending the shoots to the horizontal encourages them to fruit rather than run to wood.

Pests and diseases

Pear scab, like apple scab, stains leaves and fruit in wet weather and rainy springs: choose varieties that are little susceptible and rake up the fallen leaves. But the most serious enemy remains fire blight, caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora. It scorches shoots, flowers and young growth, which curl over and blacken as if singed by fire. There is no curative remedy: at the first symptoms, cut well below the affected zone, disinfect the tool between each cut and burn the waste.

Watch out too for pear rust, which marks the top of the leaves with bright orange spots over the summer. Its cycle passes obligatorily through junipers, often ornamental ones planted in the neighbourhood: moving or removing those junipers breaks the cycle and remains the most effective defence. Finally, keep an eye on aphids and the pear sucker, which weaken the tree and soil the foliage with honeydew.

Propagation

Like the apple tree, the pear tree does not come true from pip: propagating a variety goes through grafting. It is most often grafted onto quince, which gives a moderately sized tree that comes into bearing quickly and suits trained forms, or onto pear seedling for a vigorous, long-lived tree. Some varieties graft poorly directly onto quince and need an interstem.

Grafting is done by budding at the end of summer, or by cleft and whip-and-tongue in spring. It is a fine gesture for perpetuating an old local variety. For the simplest route, buy a maiden already grafted from a nursery, choosing at one go the variety, the rootstock and therefore the vigour of the tree.

Month-by-month care calendar

Green Hub tips

• The pear tree flowers before the apple tree: reserve the most sheltered spot in the garden for it to limit the damage from late frosts.
• Train it as an espalier against the sunniest wall: the heat of the wall protects the flowering and clearly improves the ripeness of the fruit where the summer is short.
• Plan a compatible pollinator flowering at the same time, without which many varieties give little fruit.
• Cut and burn without delay any shoot that blackens and curls into a crook: that is fire blight, serious and without remedy, disinfect the tool between each cut.
• Pick the autumn and winter pears still firm and let them finish ripening in the fruit store, in a cool, dark room: picked too late, they turn sleepy from the inside.