When Do Pear Trees Begin To Produce Fruit?
Like many orchard fruit trees, pear trees may take a bit of time before they start to produce that fruit you want. However, the great thing about pear trees is that they’re often easier to take care of than many other fruit trees. If you know how to take care of your pear trees, and when the perfect time to harvest from them is, you can enjoy a huge bounty of these delicious fruits for a long time into the future. Perhaps you’re wondering, “When do pear trees begin to bear fruit?” There’s a little more to the question than simply giving you a time frame.
Like all fruit-bearing trees, pear trees bear their fruit according to a wide variety of different factors. In this article, we’ll go over some of the most important things to keep in mind when you’re waiting for your pear tree to bear its fruit, especially for the first time. Plant Me Green wants you to have all the information you could need regarding these beautiful trees and how to take care of them.
What Time of Year Do Pear Trees Bear Fruit?
While there are many factors that can affect exactly when your pear tree bears its fruit, almost all varieties of pear trees produce fruit in the same time frame. Your location and climate will also affect the timing, but you can expect any variety of pear tree to produce fruit somewhere between the middle of the summer and the middle of autumn. Some pear trees will produce fruit as early as the month of July, but there are some varieties that will take longer and won’t produce fruit until October. It’s important to know approximately when your variety of pear tree will bear its fruit, as you don’t want to wait too long to harvest from them once they do.
Factors Affecting Your Pear Tree’s Harvest
If you want to know when pear trees begin to bear fruit, you need to understand the multiple different determining factors that affect a tree’s ability to produce. Some of the more important factors to consider are your tree’s age, the specific variety of pear it grows, the surrounding climate and weather, and whether or not it’s able to pollinate properly. We’ll dive a little deeper into some of these factors so you can get a better idea of what’s going on with your tree as it matures and starts to bear fruit.
Tree Age
Pear trees need a few years before they can start to bear fruit properly. Usually, a pear tree will begin to bear fruit somewhere between 3 and 7 years of age, depending on its size and variety. Pear tree saplings that you buy from nurseries such as ours are usually already 1 to 2 years old when you buy them. If you want to plant a new pear tree from a pear seed, you may need to wait up to 10 years before it starts to bear fruit, if it ever actually does.
Pear Tree Variety
If you’re new to growing your own fruit, it’s important to know which variety of pear your tree produces. While you may not see as wide a variety of them in your local supermarket, there are many different varieties of pears, just like the many varieties of apples you normally see at the store. Each variety has a slightly different time of the year when you want to harvest them. For example, the Hood variety of pear tree we sell here at Plant Me Green usually bears its fruit earlier in the year, around the middle of July. On the other hand, Baldwin pear trees bear fruit a little bit later, usually between August and September. The better you understand your pear variety, the better your fruit yield will be.
Pear Blossom Pollination
Pollination is a necessary element for your trees to bear fruit. Most pear varieties can’t pollinate with the same variety that they are. This means that you can’t expect pollination from two pear trees that are of the same variety. Proper pollination of these kinds of pear trees requires two different varieties of pears to be close to each other. There are some pear varieties that are self-fertile, but you can’t use these trees to pollinate other varieties of pears. Also, be wary of certain pear varieties that simply aren’t compatible—for example, Bartlett and Seckel varieties are incompatible with one another and won’t pollinate each other.
Chilling Hours
If you want your pear trees to blossom as they should when spring comes around, they need to enter a dormant state during the winter months. Different cultivars require different numbers of chilling hours to stimulate blossom growth when the weather starts to warm back up. Typically for pear trees, you’ll need them to have somewhere between 200 and 1,000 chilling hours for proper blossoming, depending on the variety.
Weather Conditions
The weather plays a big role in the development of your pear tree’s fruit. A winter that’s too mild will draw out the blossoming stage and possibly even stunt their growth. A spring that doesn’t get warm enough can also make it so that fruit can’t grow properly. Pear trees need a lot of sun, and you’ll need to make sure you water them very deeply.
How To Harvest Your Pears
Unless you grow Asian varieties, pears don’t ripen fully when they are on the tree. Pears need to be picked from the tree while they are mature but still hard to the touch. Waiting too long to pick the fruit will cause them to get mushy or grainy, the kind of texture that isn’t pleasant for anyone. You’ll know when they are ready to pick when you can snap them off the tree without too much effort. You can chill pears after picking them, but to ripen them fully, keep them at room temperature.
If you want to buy a pear tree for your home that you can enjoy for many years to come, Plant Me Green can help you find the perfect one for you. Check out our different varieties in our store to find one that will work best for your climate so you can get started growing right away.
