So glad I found this video, as I do indeed have a young pear tree planted last autumn, and all it's growth is totally vertical! So tomorrow it will certainly find itself being trained as demonstrated. None of the videos I had previously watched on pruning young fruit trees had mentioned the apical ? growth of pear and apple trees. Thank you, much appreciated!
Yay, I am so glad you found my video then too 💚 I have to agree with you that it's seems most of the videos on TH-cam either focus of mature or orchard trees and more often than not completely skip the young foundation years. What happen then is pruning become a scary thing because there is so much going on. Imagine you now having to try figure out structural pruning with all those strong vertical branches. It would be so daunting! At least now you can select your strongest ones that are placed in the best position and train those. Pruning is then going to become so easy because all you are doing is focusing on your trained branched and not on everything else. I'm so glad you found this video usefully and I hope you are able to easily apply what you saw to your young pear tree 🌻
Thank you!!! This was so informative, please do a brief on other trees too, spesifically apricot... planted last year and just left it to grow, but where like you said the pear grew up, the apricot has looonnnngggg droopy branches and I have no Idea how it should be kept.... we planted orange, naartjie, lemon, pomelo, apricot, peach, pear and plum.
Thanks for another wonderful comment Nelia 💚 I'll most certainly do that for you! I have done 2 peach tree pruning videos that may interest you. Apricots are pruned the exact same way at peaches so you can apply wht you see here to your apricots, peaches, nectarines and plums. Winter pruning a young peach tree - th-cam.com/video/usWVvqkrOsI/w-d-xo.html Summer pruning a stone fruit tree - th-cam.com/video/usWVvqkrOsI/w-d-xo.html I'll definitely get those other videos planned in for you 🌻
Wonderful video a lot of great information. I knew to planting fruit trees. I would not have known to do this in year two. Just planted two year old Peach, Pear, Plum, Apricot, Cherry trees. Will definitely use the string method next spring. Once that goes a season then I will come back and find your video on pruning. TY so much. Are you coming to us from Australia?
@@brettiowausa1 that's amazing to hear! We once started off knowing little to nothing and that's exactly why I started this TH-cam channel. Hopefully through my videos I can help fast track your knowledge and confidence in the garden and fruit orchard 🌻
@@brettiowausa1 thank you so very much for those kind words and I'm so glad to hear you found the information in this video so informative 💚 I am actually coming to you from the opposite side of Australia, namely South Africa. We share very similar climates and some say very similar accents 😁 It sounds like you have a really lovely collection of fruit trees that will hopefully give you many years of happiness and yummy fruit 🌻
Interesting information. Thank you. I want to put a couple of apple trees in, but I’m concerned about how they’d cope with the heat here. We get 40+ degrees for several days in a row, several times, during the summer. Maybe you could address the yard placement in a future video 🌳🍎🍐😊☀
Thanks for that great suggestion and for leaving a comment, I'll most certainly take you up on that request 😀 In terms of heat, apples, pears, peaches, apricots, cherries and nuts all grow really well in the Klein Karoo (Little Karoo) here in South Africa and the heat here gets intense! I'm talking mid to high 40s for 3 months. The most important thing is soil moisture and wind. If you have a lot of wind at over 40 degrees then your leaves will burn and if there isn't enough moisture they will also burn. Drip irrigation with lots of mulch would be the best and as the orchard starts to mature it will create it's own humidity and microclimate and adapt to that. What you can do if your trees are very small if put 40% shade cloth over the in the hottest months. You can do 2 years with 40% then the year after 20% and then you can remove it. This is not absolutely necessary but it's an option that will give your trees protection from the heat. I hope this helps you out a little 🌻
This was actually excellent. Thanks. So you don't top off at knee height, as some backyard orchard promoters in America advise? How tall do you then expect your tree to grow?
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed it 🙏 Yeah, I always see that and it upsets me when everyone defaults to an open center vase shape which is what you would want to achieve by cutting it so low. Apples and pears are incredibly strong vertical growers and I find them fitting into the modified upright style a lot more naturally. I didn't talk too much about style in thus video because it was already long, but u will definitely get one done on styles at its so important. Thanks for taking the time to leave me a comment🌻
Oh wow, I can imagine that this tree is pretty big. The most important thing you can do is pruning. Pruning stimulates the dormant fruiting spurs on the branches. Without pruning it will just keep getting bigger and bigger. I would start by following the principle of removing dead, diseased and crossing branches. I would also remove vertical branches going up and down. Then, you want to get a ladder type system going where there is a branch in a different direction moving up and around the trunk. You don't want opposing branches coming from the same place. Then, to stimulate the bud you need to remove 1/3 of the branch for each of the branches you choose. For side branches off the main branch you can remove 50% of the growth. You want to bring in the growth a lot and wake up all the fruiting buds. There is a lot to do and I hope this gives you a rough idea of what you can do 🌻
Good question and the answer lies in the shape of tree you want. If you want an open centre/vase shape tree then you can prune it right now and down to hip or knee height, depending on how much space you have. If you want a central leader then you will leave the tree alone until it reaches the height you want and then top it. You will then build up the side branches. For a modified central leader (my favourite) you can prune the top from chest height. If more than one branch appears thin it to only hve a single new leader. This way you stimulate vertical and lateral growth at the same time. I hope this helps? 🌻
Hello great video I have I believe a 2-3 year old tree a friend gave it to me in a container and I planted it this past spring. I am trying to send a couple pictures for you advice do you have an email that I can send them to you.
Ah that sounds awesome, congrats and yes, I'm more than happy to help. Can you send me a DM on my FB or Insta page with the pics then I can take a look and share some thoughts? 🌻
So glad I found this video, as I do indeed have a young pear tree planted last autumn, and all it's growth is totally vertical! So tomorrow it will certainly find itself being trained as demonstrated. None of the videos I had previously watched on pruning young fruit trees had mentioned the apical ? growth of pear and apple trees. Thank you, much appreciated!
Yay, I am so glad you found my video then too 💚
I have to agree with you that it's seems most of the videos on TH-cam either focus of mature or orchard trees and more often than not completely skip the young foundation years. What happen then is pruning become a scary thing because there is so much going on.
Imagine you now having to try figure out structural pruning with all those strong vertical branches. It would be so daunting! At least now you can select your strongest ones that are placed in the best position and train those. Pruning is then going to become so easy because all you are doing is focusing on your trained branched and not on everything else.
I'm so glad you found this video usefully and I hope you are able to easily apply what you saw to your young pear tree 🌻
Great video. I was about to prune my orchard but will now train for this first year. Thank you!
Thank you so much and I'm so glad it helped you out. I hope this step helps you as much as it has helped me with my trees 🌻
@@MySustainabilityJourney I was wondering if this training is still beneficial on pear trees that are already open center pruned?
Very informative. Thank you
It's the greatest of pleasure and it's makes me so happy hearing you found this video so informative 💚🌻
Even more helpful info. Thanks
Yaaaay, I'm so glad to hear this 💚 hopefully you can now approach your young pear and other fruit trees with confidence 🌻
Thank you!!! This was so informative, please do a brief on other trees too, spesifically apricot... planted last year and just left it to grow, but where like you said the pear grew up, the apricot has looonnnngggg droopy branches and I have no Idea how it should be kept.... we planted orange, naartjie, lemon, pomelo, apricot, peach, pear and plum.
Thanks for another wonderful comment Nelia 💚 I'll most certainly do that for you!
I have done 2 peach tree pruning videos that may interest you. Apricots are pruned the exact same way at peaches so you can apply wht you see here to your apricots, peaches, nectarines and plums.
Winter pruning a young peach tree - th-cam.com/video/usWVvqkrOsI/w-d-xo.html
Summer pruning a stone fruit tree - th-cam.com/video/usWVvqkrOsI/w-d-xo.html
I'll definitely get those other videos planned in for you 🌻
Wonderful video a lot of great information. I knew to planting fruit trees. I would not have known to do this in year two. Just planted two year old Peach, Pear, Plum, Apricot, Cherry trees. Will definitely use the string method next spring. Once that goes a season then I will come back and find your video on pruning. TY so much. Are you coming to us from Australia?
I am new to planting fruit trees. LOL
@@brettiowausa1 that's amazing to hear! We once started off knowing little to nothing and that's exactly why I started this TH-cam channel. Hopefully through my videos I can help fast track your knowledge and confidence in the garden and fruit orchard 🌻
@@brettiowausa1 thank you so very much for those kind words and I'm so glad to hear you found the information in this video so informative 💚
I am actually coming to you from the opposite side of Australia, namely South Africa. We share very similar climates and some say very similar accents 😁
It sounds like you have a really lovely collection of fruit trees that will hopefully give you many years of happiness and yummy fruit 🌻
Interesting information. Thank you.
I want to put a couple of apple trees in, but I’m concerned about how they’d cope with the heat here. We get 40+ degrees for several days in a row, several times, during the summer.
Maybe you could address the yard placement in a future video 🌳🍎🍐😊☀
Thanks for that great suggestion and for leaving a comment, I'll most certainly take you up on that request 😀
In terms of heat, apples, pears, peaches, apricots, cherries and nuts all grow really well in the Klein Karoo (Little Karoo) here in South Africa and the heat here gets intense! I'm talking mid to high 40s for 3 months. The most important thing is soil moisture and wind. If you have a lot of wind at over 40 degrees then your leaves will burn and if there isn't enough moisture they will also burn.
Drip irrigation with lots of mulch would be the best and as the orchard starts to mature it will create it's own humidity and microclimate and adapt to that.
What you can do if your trees are very small if put 40% shade cloth over the in the hottest months. You can do 2 years with 40% then the year after 20% and then you can remove it. This is not absolutely necessary but it's an option that will give your trees protection from the heat.
I hope this helps you out a little 🌻
This was actually excellent. Thanks. So you don't top off at knee height, as some backyard orchard promoters in America advise? How tall do you then expect your tree to grow?
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed it 🙏
Yeah, I always see that and it upsets me when everyone defaults to an open center vase shape which is what you would want to achieve by cutting it so low. Apples and pears are incredibly strong vertical growers and I find them fitting into the modified upright style a lot more naturally.
I didn't talk too much about style in thus video because it was already long, but u will definitely get one done on styles at its so important.
Thanks for taking the time to leave me a comment🌻
My dad planted a pear tree, never trained it. It is about 25-30 ft tall. Is there anything I can do to trim it so it has more than 10 pears.
Oh wow, I can imagine that this tree is pretty big. The most important thing you can do is pruning. Pruning stimulates the dormant fruiting spurs on the branches. Without pruning it will just keep getting bigger and bigger.
I would start by following the principle of removing dead, diseased and crossing branches. I would also remove vertical branches going up and down. Then, you want to get a ladder type system going where there is a branch in a different direction moving up and around the trunk. You don't want opposing branches coming from the same place.
Then, to stimulate the bud you need to remove 1/3 of the branch for each of the branches you choose. For side branches off the main branch you can remove 50% of the growth.
You want to bring in the growth a lot and wake up all the fruiting buds.
There is a lot to do and I hope this gives you a rough idea of what you can do 🌻
How tall should an Asian pear tree be before I do first pruning
Good question and the answer lies in the shape of tree you want. If you want an open centre/vase shape tree then you can prune it right now and down to hip or knee height, depending on how much space you have.
If you want a central leader then you will leave the tree alone until it reaches the height you want and then top it. You will then build up the side branches.
For a modified central leader (my favourite) you can prune the top from chest height. If more than one branch appears thin it to only hve a single new leader. This way you stimulate vertical and lateral growth at the same time.
I hope this helps? 🌻
Hello great video I have I believe a 2-3 year old tree a friend gave it to me in a container and I planted it this past spring. I am trying to send a couple pictures for you advice do you have an email that I can send them to you.
Ah that sounds awesome, congrats and yes, I'm more than happy to help. Can you send me a DM on my FB or Insta page with the pics then I can take a look and share some thoughts? 🌻
Hello I sent you pictures on Facebook messenger
Thank you, I briefly saw them and will reply to you tomorrow 🌻
Will you reply here or Facebook