I try to buy pear and apples that are disease resistant as possible but you are at the mercy of information that you can gather. I planted 10 pear trees from The Wildlife Group 7 years ago and have had a several pears the last three years but they have really developed into nice and loaded trees this year. Went to the farm today and Becton and Gate are both full of fire blight. I only bought pears which were advertised as never seeing fireblight in them, but I know the word immune was not used just never seen. The other varieties are standing amongst these two and seem clean. My point of this post is no hard feelings but If you are conscientious about avoiding trees that will get fireblight then I would avoid these two.
Pear Tree Fire Blight
- Thread starter KY wild
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bigboreblr
5 year old buck +
I had some fireblight in my bartlet lat yar. I cut out the bad spots and sprayed copper on it. I pruned the tree hard this year and it came back. Seems to be ok.
Spray them, prune out the bad, topwork with those good varieties next year.
That is the downside to "deer" trees. Not much info to go on. Tons of commercialy grown varieties to have a nice late dropping orchard. Hoping my olympic will be a good one. Had very little roots, but seems to be waking up ok so far.
Spray them, prune out the bad, topwork with those good varieties next year.
That is the downside to "deer" trees. Not much info to go on. Tons of commercialy grown varieties to have a nice late dropping orchard. Hoping my olympic will be a good one. Had very little roots, but seems to be waking up ok so far.
Do you fertilize your pear trees? I did lightly this year and I am sure it is part of my problem
Yes, I do.
I've bought lots of every kind of pear tree that grows in the south many advertised as blight free. None of them have been blight free. had a landscape architect over the other day and asked him if he was aware of any blight free pears...No. The occasional tree seems to avoid it but the same variety next to it may not. All this in the hot, humid, rainy Deep South.
Yea, I also have had two hail storms this spring, I fertilized a little and it has been warm and wet, perfect storm. It still hurts my feeling after babying for several years to get them exactly where you want them. $%^&&*()(&.
bigboreblr
5 year old buck +
The more you know about habitat, the more you appreciate a simple rye foodplot.................. That hail would just be water for it in 30 minutes.
I'm not aware of any pears that are fireblight 'immune'. Some cultivars, like Kieffer and other 'sand-pear hybrids', are 'fireblight tolerant'. Keiffer is a SURVIVOR in the hot, humid, Deep South, where I grew up. If you see an OLD pear at a farmstead or rural country home anywhere from south AL to central KY, I'd bet you a Coke that it's a Kieffer - and in over 80% of the cases, you'd be buying me a drink. That said, if you looked at them today... they might have multiple fireblight strikes all through their canopies. But they just shut them down, shrug them off, and keep on producing limb-breaking loads of fruit.
I have plenty of FB strikes in some pears this year, but 30-yr old trees... I can't reach to prune them all out. I'm counting on the pears stopping progression on their own and shrugging it off - but if not, I can replant something else. I have other things to do than worry about pruning out non-fatal FB strikes.
I have plenty of FB strikes in some pears this year, but 30-yr old trees... I can't reach to prune them all out. I'm counting on the pears stopping progression on their own and shrugging it off - but if not, I can replant something else. I have other things to do than worry about pruning out non-fatal FB strikes.
Native Hunter
5 year old buck +
Fireblight is horrible, but through the years I've been affected very little by it. When I saw this thread the other day, I walked both of my orchards at home and the farm to see what was showing up. Out of 30+ pear trees, I found minor FB on only one tree. It was a Becton (which I think is nothing more than a Kieffer). Where I live, pear trees are less likely to get FB than apple trees.
The only other FB I saw on the recent walk was minor infections on about 3 apple trees that I fertilized and limed heavily this spring. It does not appear that the FB will amount to very much on those. I will say that over the last few years I have identified some apple cultivars that I think are more prone to FB than average, and I would not plant more of them. One of those is Franklin Cider.
My next door neighbor has a 14 year old Milam apple tree that he dug up and transplanted from an old home place. At about year 8, that tree got FB so bad that I thought it was going to die. It looked to me like the infection went all the way into 3 year old wood, and hardly a limb was left on the tree that wasn't affected. He did nothing about it. He didn't trim out any limbs or do anything else.
The next year his tree started slowly recovering. The ground under the tree was covered with dead limbs. Within 2 more years you could not tell anything had happened to the tree, and on the third year after it had a big crop of apples. I have watched that tree like a hawk ever since, and I have never seen another affected limb. You can draw your own conclusions.
The only other FB I saw on the recent walk was minor infections on about 3 apple trees that I fertilized and limed heavily this spring. It does not appear that the FB will amount to very much on those. I will say that over the last few years I have identified some apple cultivars that I think are more prone to FB than average, and I would not plant more of them. One of those is Franklin Cider.
My next door neighbor has a 14 year old Milam apple tree that he dug up and transplanted from an old home place. At about year 8, that tree got FB so bad that I thought it was going to die. It looked to me like the infection went all the way into 3 year old wood, and hardly a limb was left on the tree that wasn't affected. He did nothing about it. He didn't trim out any limbs or do anything else.
The next year his tree started slowly recovering. The ground under the tree was covered with dead limbs. Within 2 more years you could not tell anything had happened to the tree, and on the third year after it had a big crop of apples. I have watched that tree like a hawk ever since, and I have never seen another affected limb. You can draw your own conclusions.
I agree Native but I now have 3 trees with fireblight and 2 of the three are Becton and your only fireblight pear tree is Bectin. Which tells me Bectin is much more likely to get fireblight than the average pear tree. We both have numerous other trees without it in the same area as Becton. Unless each cultivar has its own temp and humidity thresholds causing fireblight and the perfect storm hit Becton this year, and next year the conditions will miss Becton but affect Seckel. I don't think so, I think I will avoid Becton in the future. Thoughts?
Native Hunter
5 year old buck +
Yes, I definitely agree that my past experiences should and will have an impact on what I do in the future. I have topworked a lot of trees to better cultivars, and it has paid off. I had an American Summer Pearmain Apple that was fireblight prone and never produced anything for me over about a 10 year period. I topworked it to Priscilla and had a nice crop of apples two years later.
There are just some things that are hard to explain. Bartlett has a reputation of being highly prone to FB, so I decided not to plant any. However, I was sent one by mistake and didn't realize it until it started fruiting. It is now a mature tree that produces big crops every year but has never shown FB on a single limb. Go figure.
Hoytvectrix
5 year old buck +
We planted a few Bartletts at least 10 years ago. I think I have seen fireblight on two of them in two years. I planted some kieffers nearby and they have had fireblight every year they have been in the ground.
I wonder if there are biotypes to fireblight? There are numerous older pear trees in the area. I've wondered what those pears might be.
Native Hunter
5 year old buck +
You could probably do a little research and ID some of those old pears. There weren’t many different varieties planted in the olden days like we do now.
Early on I bought two pears that were supposed to be Kieffer, but I could soon tell they were something else. I was able to ID them as Ayers by the looks, taste and drop time. It’s an old time pear I really like, so the mistake was not a bad thing. I have plenty of Kieffers.
