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Bartlett Pear tree help

gunfighter
16 years ago

I planted a Bartlett pear tree in 2004. It is now about 20 ft tall. Every year it has abundant green foliage, but never has any blossoms of fruit. I have taken good care to keep it insect free and decease free. Is there something I need to do to make it blossom and bear fruit? This year looks like another year of no blossoms and no fruit.

Comments (11)

  • calistoga_al ca 15 usda 9
    16 years ago

    It sounds like it is growing straight up. Fruit will be produced on limbs with an angle of 45 degrees or more from the vertical. Al

  • franktank232
    16 years ago

    Probably has to come down to rootstock and the fact that pears don't bear for quite some time (from the reading i've done). I know of cases where it was near 10 years before a pear tree came into bearing. Just remember that the trees live for a LONG time.

  • Scott F Smith
    16 years ago

    gunfighter, I have 40 european pears which I planted in 2003 and so far no fruits at all. Only my asian pears have fruited. Frank is correct, they can take a long time. In retrospect I wished I had used quince rootstock which gives faster bearing and also smaller trees which are easier to maintain. Since I grafted most of the trees myself I could have picked whatever rootstock I wanted.

    Scott

  • marknmt
    16 years ago

    Could it also be a factor of a fertilizer imbalance? I think I saw a red flag in that "abundant green foliage".

    ?

    Mark

  • rigreening
    16 years ago

    Gunfighter;

    When you say your pear "never has any blossoms of fruit" do you mean that the tree never blossoms, or that it blossoms then never bears fruit? I'm just wondering if it's having trouble flowering, or if it's flowering and having trouble setting fruit.....

  • khadija_gardener
    15 years ago

    Well,

    I also have a Bartlett pear and it flowers and gets fruit. I have had it for about five years. However, the pears are really really small, like smaller than a cherry. What am I doing wrong? or is this only a step in the process?

  • lucky_p
    15 years ago

    Khadija,
    Your pear must be 'Bradford', not 'Bartlett'.
    Either that, or it was a Bartlett grafted onto callery pear rootstock and the grafted variety died, leaving you with a callery pear.

  • sthnreb_comcast_net
    14 years ago

    I have a Bartlett pear tree about 20 ft tall. It's been bearing fruit but something get the pears. They will get near golf ball size and then suddenly overnight disappear without a trace. Squirrels, chipmonks, birds? I've gotten one great pear from it but don't know how to keep 'something' from getting them?

  • tripleione
    9 years ago

    I'm sorry to dig this thread up from the dead, but I did a search and this was the thread with a problem somewhat related to my own.

    I bought two Bartlett pear trees in the early spring 2013. My pear trees bloomed and it was a very nice display. I am a bit confused, though, as I thought the flowers were supposed to grow into the fruit, but my two trees both show no signs of growing fruit. Most of the flower petals have shriveled up and fallen off. It doesn't look as anything else is growing in the area where they were other than more leaves. Both the trees looks healthy as far as I can tell.

    I just recently found out that most pears are not self-fertile, but the label that came with the tree when I bought it said that another Bartlett tree could pollinate it. I would have bought a different variety had I known at the time.

    We had a late cold snap in my area earlier this year, but I thought pears were fairly tolerant of cooler spring time weather. It only got down to about 33 F.

    Just wondering if this is a pollination issue, temperature issue or something else? Maybe I'm just being impatient. Thanks for any help.

  • ltilton
    9 years ago

    Probably a pollination issue, although your trees are young for bearing. Trees that aren't self-fertile always need another variety as a pollination, or else they could fertilize themselves.

  • milehighgirl
    9 years ago

    It is more than likely that Bartlett is not self-fruitful where you live. (see link below) Pear pollen also does not attract bees and it is has been recommended (somewhere) to spray a bee attractant on pears.

    The easiest fix for you is to graft different pear cultivars onto you trees. This will give you more variety. Pears are the easiest trees to graft. There are a lot of grafting videos on YouTube. You will have to wait until next spring to graft.

    I bought a Moonglow from Costco to pollinate my pear tree mentioned in the link, and that did the trick. Get yourself to a nursery now and find a pear tree that is blooming and put it beneath your trees. (Even in a pot if you don't want it there permanently)

    It is also possible to hand pollinate with pear pollen. I don't know how to go about shipping pollen, but maybe someone else here can chime in. (And once you try to do it you will be forever indebted to bees!)

    Here is a link that might be useful: Can you Identify this pear?