Help with a Pear tree. Just moved into this house. Has some dead appearing branches, some discolored leaves, semi-hollow lower trunk. Has been dropping a lot of fruit. We like the idea of having a pear tree, but if this is beyond saving we'll look into having it removed. It provides minimal shade.
reddit.com/gallery/ooyqa7Posted Jul 21, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC
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See captions for the photos. Basically, it appears partially diseased, and drops fruit that appears unripe. When we arrived at the house the ground was covered in fruit in various stages of decay, attracting an unholy amount of flies to the yard. If it can provide edible fruit, that would be cool, but if its more trouble than its worth or is going to die anyways we'll get rid of it. There are other healthier shade trees in the yard. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks so much!
I'm by no means an expert, but had a pear at the last house. I wasn't good with the thinning out of the fruit/pruning at first so we had a higher amount of fruit every second year - and would get a bunch of drops before the crop was ready for consumption, which I understand as completely normal, after 8 or so years I got pretty good at thinning it out.
Go remove anything that is misformed - you won't eat these so redirect the tree's resources to ones you will. Once that's done take a look for anything the birds/insects have gotten, remove them too. I used to do this every couple of weeks when cutting the grass up until harvest time. If you go through a drought or other big stressors, pull more then normal off early to give a chance at a decent harvest for the rest.
The trunk doesn't look great, but I don't see anything around it if it did fall it wouldn't do any damage. I'd leave it and enjoy the pears until that happens. It took a long time to get that big, so the tree is a survivor, enjoy it.