The rather small old pear tree (half trunk), which had not been pruned for ages, produced only two pears after my first heavy pruning in early 2023. In the spring of 2024 it had developed masses of steeply vertical water shoots, of which I removed about half (the narrowest, most incorrectly and most vertically growing).
The rest developed lots of flower clusters at the ends and later on lots of fruit – one to several budding pears on each branch. Some of them fell at the end of August but the tree miraculously held on to almost all its fruit. In September, I collected several kilos of greenish-yellow red-cheeked pears which ripened in the refrigerator to wonderfully aromatic and succulently sweet yet firm yellow pears. Seeing their colors, size, harvesting time and ripening behavior I think they must be Clapp’s Favorite.
Seeing the age of the tree I had never regularly watered it before. This year I gave it one really deep watering during the August heatwave to help it hold on to its fruit. That has seemed to be sufficient.
This fall I took out some new water shoots but decided to let most of them stay and see what happens. I also spread green garden waste and horse manure on the soil around the tree to feed it over the winter.
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