Amazing!
Question: Will you prune to a central leader this winter?
If this was an apple tree - yes for sure. With pears, I never know quite what to do. Even when I have pruned pears to a central leader, it seems that the limbs lower than 15 feet or so still want to grow very long like the central leader. If you try to train them to grow outward, they will just keep growing and the weight of the fruit can break them.
It almost seems to me that with pears the tight vertical growth doesn't hurt anything and helps to keep the limbs from breaking from the weight of the fruit. The tall Ayers pears that I have shown pictures of recently were just let go to grow like they want to except for removing limbs about 5 feet up.
It has worked exceptional for them. However, with my Moonglow I had limbs to break this year. I actually pruned the Moonglow a few days ago because even the central leader was about to break. My hope is that the tree will now get "bushier" and grow shorter, stronger limbs.
The Galloway and Senator Clark pears at the farm seem to have a better tree structure than Moonglow, and the limbs seem to grow more like what I would want them to.
I look at old pear trees in the neighborhood that were never trained and all of them in time have done well. It seems that so far for me that the variety of the pear makes a difference with Moonglow being the big question mark at this point. I'm probably going to just let the one in the pic do whatever it wants to and see what happens.
I'm certainly open to suggestions and would like to hear other's thoughts.
PS: The Gate Pear and Mrs. Lanene I planted and haven't got fruit from yet are shaping themselves well. They look like they will be in good shape when the fruit comes.
