North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[derry and bill <wchase@interchange.ubc.ca>]

Doreen,

I'm not into pears even though I have about nine trees.

I went and looked at them and the blossoms are about to open so I'm not able 
to
look at dormant vegetative and dormant fruit buds.

On my trees, all the one year old wood is filled with vegetative buds only. 
The
two year and older wood has masses of spurs and each spur has a cluster of
blossoms with a rosette of leaves. Occasionally spurs have leaves only.

All I know is that you should not prune pears!! You "plant pears for your 
heirs"
i.e. they'll take forever to fruit if you prune them.

Preferably, you should bend the branches to 45-60 degrees to force them to 
produce
fruit buds.

Once you've got masses of spurs as I have, you should be deleting any downward
facing spurs or ends of branches that turn downward. You don't get good 
quality
pears off wood that goes downwards.

Also, if pruning is necessary because the pear tree is getting too big, use
summer-pruning. Summer-pruning is especially good for pear trees.

Cheers,

Derry

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Derry Walsh & Bill Chase
wchase@interchange.ubc.ca
Aldergrove,  B. C.,  Canada
phone/fax (604) 856-9316
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Home web pages: http://derrysorchardandnursery.ca
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 I also have two
: pears in my mini orchard.  How do you tell the fruit buds from the leaf 
buds on
pears?  Is it the same?
: Doreen Howard