Pear Trees

I put in six Keefer pear trees in late 2012 and this year they put out a lot of blooms. Don't know if they'll make fruit but they sure were pretty. Our bees were all over them because they were probably the first things to bloom around here.

Anyways, a question. Two of the trees are going straight up with no branches. These two are about 7-1/2 feet tall or more and covered with small inch-long branches coming out of the main part of the tree. Should I top them to get them to branch out like the others? The main body is about 1-1/2 inches in diameter.

Don't know about pruning. I planted some pears just for the spring flowers.

I did email the fellow from Century Farms who we got the pear trees from and he said, yes we do need to prune these two trees right away even though it's late. He sent me a link to a15-minute video on how to do it. Just a plug for David Vernon and his Century Farms Orchards if you ever need trees he ships them. They are really a reasonable price even with the shipping. If you live in NC or VA it might even be worth a drive when he has his open house and people come to pick up their trees they ordered. By the way, David specializes in old timey apples which aren't around much anymore. He calls them heritage trees. Many of them he has grafted from a 100-year old tree from his Grandma's farm. If you go to the open house, which he hosts in October or November, you'll get to try a bunch of great tasting apples that I guarantee will take you back to when you were a kid and you'd steal apples from Farmer Brown down the lane. His web-site is @ http://centuryfarmorchards.com/. Lots of pics and great info for anyone wanting to start or upgrade an orchard.

That's nice he included a video. It really helps to "see" it done.

I have a Moonglow pear that was doing about the same thing, 5 or 6 straight up branches and I just left them the first couple of years because all of the mature pear trees I see around here are of the same growth habit. But you also see a lot of them with the tops broken out because they can't sustain the weight of the fruit!

So after a little Googling, I did find out that it should be pruned and trained to behave something more like an apple tree and I cut them back quite a bit shorter to outward facing buds. Another thing about most pear trees is that the crotch angle will need to be persuaded to let out to 45 degrees. They naturally want to grow their branches straight upward and tighter. I'm going to have to put spacers on mine. I'm glad I found all this out before this tree got much bigger!

I wish I had grown up near an apple orchard to get to taste these old varieties you speak about. Very few apple trees here, too hot. There are now a few varieties that can stand our heat, I'll have to look into them.