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[Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

When I get inadequate vegetative growth from Asian pears I drastically remove the spurs during dormant pruning and throw them some extra N.  Forget about fruit until vigor returns and in the future don't allow the tree to produce more fruit than it's number of leaves can justify. 

 

Pears don't transplant well because their root systems are not at all fibrous.  If the tree is bearing age all the more trouble because the tree puts less energy into pushing out replacement root in favor of making babies.  If you only remove fruit you only solve half the problem as spur-wood is a huge energy sink as well because the plant grows flowers for next year (very expensive!).  If the pear is on a dwarfing rootstock that may even be partially incompatible, yikes.

 

Next question was about Mt. Royal being perhaps biennial.  I haven't noticed that in trees I manage here, although this year there was no fruit on this variety on the MRs I manage.  Certainly one year does not a trend make.  The site where the MRs are also had light crops of most other varieties, but at least there was some fruit.