Pruning a young pear tree

joe.shimmin · February 2021

Hi, I have a pear tree that is 3 years or so old. I’ve been reading up and read yesterday that pears are prone to grow upwards and also that their wood is weaker than that of apple and because of this, strongly upwards growing branches should be removed as they can break off when covered in fruit.

My 2 strongest branches (circled in red) grow strongly upwards and I have one other that has 4 much more horizontal branches coming out of it (circled in green). Should I prune off these 2 strong upwards growing branches in favour of letting the higher, horizontal branches develop, or am I being too drastic/ over cautious in thinking about doing this?

Thanks

Mr. Vine Eye · February 2021

Oh can see it much better in this.

Personally I'd probably leave it and not do anything to it.

Or maybe reduce the height of a branch or two to bring them roughly equal length/height. If they're not already.

I wouldn't take off two whole branches. Assuming it has branched at the correct height for you?

joe.shimmin · February 2021

Thanks. I think the tree looks great and I’m happy with it. It’s just I’m reading up on all of my trees and trying to get up on what to prune, what not to prune and how and when. When I read this
https://www.gardenfocused.co.uk/fruitarticles/pears/prune.php
(scroll down a load) on a site that seems very clever and thorough I thought that maybe action needed to be taken. But I’m more than happy to leave it.

I guess I can always thin the pears if they look too heavy.

I took all of your advice with my new Apple espaliers and have cut back all of the nobbles and selected the laterals and cut most of the other bits back completely or two 3 buds.

I’ll soon finish the job on those and cut the laterals back a tiny bit to a downwards facing bud and then I’ll have a go at my older espaliers and cut those laterals back to a downwards facing bud and the sub laterals over 9 inches back to 3 buds. When it comes to training a third tier my book says cut above a strong bud. But how do I know if a bud is strong? Does it have to have growth coming out of it already or does it have to be big, or look nice? I’m getting myself stressed as for a new tier I need to have 3 good buds in a row going up the stem and I just don’t feel qualified enough to make that cut! 🤯

Am I over worrying? I just know I can’t undo a cut and want to get it right. Thanks for all your help!

Mr. Vine Eye · February 2021

joe.shimmin said:

does it have to be big, or look nice?

That tickled me. You wouldn’t want to cut above an ugly bud would you 😂

You just pick the best placed buds. Find the ones that will work best for the next tier - slightly below the wire and facing in the right directions and then just go for the next bud above those to use as the leader.

if there’s a cluster of them close together, and the next one up from the perfect tier branches is in an awkward place and won’t work because it’ll be too tight against your support, or whatever, then choose another one above and when growth starts just pinch off the shoots you don’t need.

My first year, I left a few shoots - I had an awkward start because my maiden tree was feathered, already had some branching but they weren’t in the right places. So I didn’t have good buds off the main trunk, I had to cut above a branch and then cut the branch shorter to an upwards bud and use that as my leader. Oh I also, panicked decided to cut it further back because I wasn’t confident that it would grow from the stubs in the first photo. That cut went badly and tore the bark, so I had to cut further back and lost even more buds, so was a nightmare start!

so that felt worrying as a new gardener because there wasn’t anything online or in books about that and no one could really advise me either! I was nervous because if it went wrong I had to nothing to cut back to really on the trunk, I was already much further below the wire than you’d usually start.

But it worked fine - I used the bud I cut to as leader, one coming off the same branch as one side of the tier, and then a bud off a separate side branch to do the other side. There were lots of buds because of the awkward structure of it, so I waited til they started to grow, checked that ones I’d picked were ok and then pinched the others off.

The other tiers, like yours, were text book because it was just cutting the one main trunk to the right buds. It’s simple.

This year I’m cutting the final tier, so just two buds, no leader.

Just don’t use rubbish blunt secateurs like I did that first time!

Pruning a young pear tree

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