pear
When to prune pear trees?
- Botanical name
- Pyrus communis
- Family
- Rosaceae
Pear trees are pruned from January to March. They are planted from October to March. They are harvested from August to October.
Pear trees are woody perennials. The edible part is the fruit.
Pears are picked while still firm, because the fruit ripens only after picking.
A pear is grafted on a seedling or on quince. A seedling rootstock makes a large tree that needs a lot of room. Quince keeps it substantially smaller, and the dwarfing rootstocks Quince C and Eline let it grow even in a large container.
Pear trees through the year
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
this week
Pruning
Planting
Harvest
15913172125293337414549
- pruning
- planting
- harvest
In short
Pruning
from January to March
weeks 5 to 13
Planting
from October to March
week 44 to week 13 of the next year
Pruning cut
while dormant
Spacing between plants
3.5 m
First crop
after 4 to 6 years
Harvest
from August to October
weeks 33 to 42
Growing conditions
🪨
Soil
loamy
🧪
pH
6 to 8
☀️
Sun
full sun
💧
Water
little water
❄️
Frost
overwinters outdoors
📏
Height
12 to 15 m
🐝
Pollination
needs a pollinating variety nearby
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- Colonies of small aphids sit on the shoot tips and the underside of the leaves. The leaf curls and puckers, and sticky honeydew is left on everything below. The viruses they carry are more dangerous than the feeding itself.
- Prevention
- Go easy on nitrogen, because soft sappy growth is what aphids are looking for. Encourage the predators (ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps). Use a reflective mulch, which puts them off settling, and a strong jet of water to knock the colony off the tips.
- What to do
- Potassium soap works on contact and only while it is wet, so it has to reach the underside of the leaf. On drought-loving plants and in heat it can scorch, so apply it in the evening.
- Signs
- A brown rot spreading across the fruit, with light brown cushions of spores on it, often in concentric rings. The fruit drops or stays on the branch as a dried mummy.
- Prevention
- The fungus overwinters in mummified fruit and in cankered wounds in the bark, so collect and remove every rotten and mummified fruit and cut out affected twigs. The infection enters through a wound, so a net against birds takes away the main door. In a cluster it passes from one fruit to the fruit it touches.
- What to do
- For the home garden there are no fungicides against brown rot. What is left is picking off and removing the mummies as they appear and choosing less susceptible varieties.
- Signs
- In the ripening fruit sits a white caterpillar with a brown head, feeding in the core. On the side of the fruit or at the calyx there is an exit hole, and a fruit cut open shows a tunnel and heaps of droppings. Attacked fruit ripens and drops early.
- Prevention
- A pheromone trap hung in the tree in May does not put the pest down, but it tells you when the males are flying, and with that when any measure makes sense. Encourage birds, wasps and ground beetles. Collect the windfalls as they drop, so that the caterpillars do not withdraw into the soil.
- What to do
- For the home garden the measures are pheromone traps to follow the flight (on a lone tree they catch enough males for fewer eggs to be fertilised), picking off the attacked fruit and beneficial nematodes sprayed onto the trunk, the branches and the soil under the crown in autumn, when the caterpillars leave the fruit.
- Signs
- The blossoms wilt and blacken suddenly at flowering, the shoots dry up and curl like a shepherd's crook, as if the tree had been scorched. In wet weather a white slime oozes from the infection. Peel the bark at the edge of the infection and the wood under it is foxy red brown. Sunken dead patches form on the branches.
- Prevention
- The disease attacks the pome fruit: apple, pear and quince. Remove late, secondary blossoms before they open.
- What to do
- There are no products. Cut the infected parts out at once: peel the bark, look for the red brown staining and cut back to healthy wood well below it, on thicker branches a good deal further. Disinfect the tools between every cut. Burn what you cut off or take it away from the garden. In some countries the disease is under official control, so report a suspicion to the plant health service.
- Signs
- In summer and early autumn bright orange blotches appear on the upper side of the pear leaves, and later, on the underside opposite them, brown outgrowths like galls. On the juniper there are lasting swellings on branches and stems, from which orange jelly-like horns push out in spring after damp days.
- Prevention
- The fungus needs both plants and cannot close its cycle without one of them: from the pear it goes to the juniper, from the juniper in spring back to the pear. A juniper near a pear is therefore not an innocent neighbour. The spores travel a good way on the wind, so removing one bush is no guarantee.
- What to do
- Cut the infected parts of the branches out of the juniper or take the bush away from the neighbourhood of the pear. On the pear cut out any cankered wounds on the branches. Stripping the leaves off a badly infected pear does more harm than good.
- Signs
- On the fruit and the leaves there are dark, scabby patches. The skin beside a scab stops growing and the fruit cracks as it swells. In a heavy infection the leaves drop early.
- Prevention
- The fungus overwinters on fallen leaves and infected shoots, so cleared leaves are the main measure: rake up and carry away the fallen leaves and fruit, and cut out affected shoots. An airy crown dries faster and is less susceptible.
- What to do
- For a tree whose fruit is eaten there is nothing for the home garden. What is left is hygiene and the choice of a tougher variety.
Check the registration and the label before use.
Keep track of your plants with Tendask
Log the task and set a reminder for the next one. Every plant keeps its own history, so there is nothing to guess at.
Related plants
The plants below are in the same botanical family (Rosaceae).
Sources about the plant: Clemson Cooperative Extension, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, Iowa State University Extension, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Royal Horticultural Society, University of Maryland Extension, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: EPPO Global Database, University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, Utah State University Extension.