Another great video! I also have a 3 year old 20th century Asian pear tree with strong roots in a 15 gallon pot. Currently its flowering and will hopefully fruit this year. Glad to be able to see how they look and taste... 👍
Hey Adrianne, congrats on those new tree babies! These really don't have any specific needs outside of what's typical for a pome fruit (apple or pear). The do need pruning every Winter to induce fruiting and keep their size under control. They can get quite large under the right conditions!
I got a bare root tree from Costco and I planted it in the spring of 2017 but It has not grown very well. I pruned it when I first planted it because everyone recommended it to give it a good start. It did grow but not much just a few branches. Then this spring did it again and it grew again just a few branches about 3-6 inches and the leaves looked burned so I placed some shade on it. It does not get any sun until around 11:00 to 12:00, what I thought was that it needed more chill hours. My parents had 3 trees in Northern Utah and it grew like yours very good and produce a ton of fruits. Key is to keep the fruits small because the ones at the grocery store are usually Korean which they prune the fruits to leave only a few so they get really large and can sell it for a premium. Those are filled with water and so the taste are so diluted that I hated those. The ones we grew ourselves are smaller but really packs a taste. Anyhow back to my tree, I mulch it like crazy about 6 inches min and fertilize it with compost 3/year and sometimes give it some fish emulsion also, but nothing at all? Any recommendations? Maybe stop buying trees from Costco :)?
Hey Garry. So when I read your first line I immediately thought of our 2 Costco trees that have really struggled. One is a Valencia orange and it's starting to come around, but the other is a Satsuma Mandarin that is pretty much dying on us. Those trees are so stressed by the time we get them home that I think it's just too much. That being said, this one was from Home Depot, so I have no idea what the rootstock is which is what I really key in on now when I buy stone and pome fruit trees. One thing I can say for certain is that the trees we have here on the farm are all in full blazing sun and this one has been out there as long as our oldest trees (just under 4 years). I say if you're going to keep this one I would try to transplant it this winter if you have a spot that gets full sun. Sounds like you're doing everything else we would do on this (mulch, fertilize, water), so I can't say for sure what else it may be.
My 10 year old 20th Century asian pear was originally bareroot from Dave Wilson Nursery. It is in full LV sun but was really scraggly and lanky for the first 3-4 years. I went over to our university desert demonstration orchard and ran into an awesome master gardener from Japan who showed me several pruning and flower thinning techniques used in the old country. The demonstration orchard winter prunes all their trees to maintain 2.5m- 3m (8-10ft) tall so no ladders are required to pick fruit. The Japanese master said this will help strengthen the lanky lateral arms and it has. Also he told me in January (before flowering) to prune all down facing spurs (weak branching and weak fruit). Post bloom he removes about 70-80% of the flowers leaving about 3 fruits per branch which develop to beautiful baseball size fruit. While you can leave more fruit, it really stresses the tree and the best I have gotten is mediocre ping pong to racquetball size fruit when I don't flower thin. Ripe fruit easily detaches from the tree late August to end of September and is slightly translucent gold. In addition to heavily mulching, I use Ironite twice a year to combat chlorosis (leaf yellowing) in our alkaline soil. This year I would say I had about 25 kg of the BEST tasting fruit.
B.A. Woodward, thank you and I will give it a try. I only have like 3 branches on it and none of them are pointing downward. I did do my pruning after all the leaves had dropped last winter. The pruning I did on it when I planted it, had no leaves yet also. It has not flowered yet, but I do supplement it with a chelated iron drench 1-2/year, but the leaves are not yellow just kind of burnt at the edges. I am hoping another year or two and it will establish itself.
Duane(hope I am spelling it right), If I let it, it will get sun for about 8 hours a day in the Summer time. I think it is just the root stock, all my trees from costco with the exception of the Valencia oranges did very poorly or has died. My two Valencia orange took 4 years to finally started doing well, my Tangerine also is going on 4 years has never produced fruit and has died off and grown then died off again, but the trunk is noticeably getting larger and so I am crossing my fingers. Yes I also bought the Satsuma too and it has struggled for 3 years now. I planted some castor bean plants in pots and used them to shade it from Afternoon sun and it did well this year, well well for it anyways. Thanks for the suggestion, but I think it is just the costco plants are very poor root stock. Also love your videos, very good information.
Hey Lauren. This is a self pollinating tree, so no need for another variety. However, most pome fruit will give you better, more consistent production with another variety close by.
Hey Debbie. Most of our trees are open center with designated scaffold branches to hold the weight of the fruit and keep balance in the tree. We are testing some central leader trees on the new property and pear trees are the test. They usually do a bit better with a Central Leader shape.
Hey lilCaz. Full sun on this guy here in the Phoenix area. It's going to get tall fast, so unless you want a 30+ foot tall tree in a couple years you'll need to prune it well each winter.
I have the same pear from home depot 2015, mine fruited 5 on 2016 then i got at least 30 on 2017 and then about 20 each afterwards, this year i have about 35/40. Not sure why urs took so long to fruit. My MN weather was not doing too good so mine did not grow as big as urs. Check out my channel if u wanna see mine.
Hey Julio. That's interesting to hear. We have a couple of these on the new property that are grown on a better root stock for our area, so I'm hoping we see fruit earlier. Do you usually thin your fruit?
Well, I can't have a ruined life on my hands! The 20th Century is self fertile, but supposedly is more productive with cross pollination. We use the Shinseiki as our cross pollinator on the farm. I'll link the video we did on the Shinseiki here for you; ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1MOHm0ySVZk.html
Hey David. Pear trees really struggle during our summer months here in AZ and then go into dormancy for the winter. That's why you're seeing that on the leaves. Unlike our stone fruit that put heavy growth on in the Fall, pear and apple trees don't bounce back until spring. When this tree came back out of dormancy in the spring it really came on strong with heavy fruiting and additional branching.
That's a great suggestion Julio and on the new farm we have our pear trees on a central leader system to allow them to grow taller and help protect the fruit.
