Topic: Old overgrown fruit trees

[Wrennie]

This is a pear ree in my yard. I dont know if it was ever pruned. I mean besides a bear climbing for fruit and breaking a branch.


We get more pears than we'll ever eat off of it.


I'm scared to prune it wrong. 
How should i do it?

[Patty S]

I think it's a little late to prune this one, Wrennie! Fruit trees need to be pruned when they're little, to keep the branches from growing vertically. This one doesn't look like it EVER got pruned!

At a house we bought several years ago, somebody had neglected an apple tree & we couldn't reach the fruit without a huge, tall ladder! We whacked it down to where the trunk split (didn't even want it if the fruit wasn't accessible), & new branches grew out of the stumps! It was manageable after that, but it took a couple years before the new branches were mature enough to flower.  I don't know if pear trees do the same thing or not, but unless you want to keep climbing it to get to the pears, it might be worth a try.

[Hillhound]

Sounds like good advice there from Patty. Most fruit trees can be treated the same as each other and will thrive.

We too had an apple tree that had got out of hand, we really hacked it back and forced it to start new growth lower down and it has made a decent cropper, the year before last we took just over 150lbs of cooking apples off it anyway....

I've got to come clean and admit pics are no good to me Wrennie as I am blind and do all my gardening by touch. I learnt most of what I know before losing my sight and have read a lot on the internet. I know what to do and with my touch and a bit of help from my sighted wife I do my best.

I'll ask my wife to take some pics later in the season and you can see what sort of mess I make of it!