Why does the pear not bear fruit?
A pear is considered a rather capricious tree, it often freezes, gets sick, which is why there are quite few industrial pear plantations in our country. Private gardeners also often complain about this crop, not only about its capriciousness to the climate, but also about the fact that a pear often does not bloom and does not form fruits for a very long time after planting a seedling, and sometimes it can bloom very profusely, but also not no crop. We will talk about the causes of this phenomenon today.
Content:
- Varietal Pear Features
- Lack of nutrition in the soil
- Mistakes during planting
- Pear - Wild
- Lighting deficit
- Pest damage
- A pear gives color but no fruit
Varietal Pear Features
The most commonplace reason when a pear does not bear fruit is its varietal feature. This is a biological sign and nothing bad, except for the extra years of longing, it does not bring owners of garden plots. In order not to worry about the fact that the seedling you purchased and planted, as expected, does not bear fruit, you need to find out about the date of its entry into fruiting before buying a particular pear variety.
Almost every pear variety has its own term. It is probably not worth listing the dates of fruiting for each variety, so we will give approximate dates for bearing fruiting for the most famous and most common varieties (both in garden plots and in nurseries).
Varieties of pears "Moskvichka" and "In memory of Yakovlev" will give the first crop after three or a maximum of four years; varieties "Larinskaya", "Fatherland" and "Red-sided" will come into bearing a little later - four or five years after the planting of the seedling on the site; varieties "Leningradskaya" and "Beauty" will delight the fruits five or six years after planting a seedling on the site; varieties "Josephine", "Mechelnskaya" and "Bereslutskaya" will give the first fruits after all, at least ten years after planting a seedling in a permanent place.
As for the age of the seedling, when planting pear plants with annuals, they take root more quickly and the period of entry into fruiting can be reduced by a year. When planting in two-year-olds, which usually does not happen, because it is very difficult to dig out two-year-old pears from the nursery, they are sick longer and the period of their entry into fruiting can come about a year later.
Of course, everything is being improved, now there are new stocks on which the pear bears fruit faster, for example, stocks such as PG 2, PG 17-16, and PG 12 of the Michurin Institute selection bring the age of pear in bearing for a couple of years.
Lack of nutrition in the soil
The second reason, if the pear does not bear fruit for a long period of time, is a deficiency in the soil of a particular nutrient. With such a deficiency, the pear seems to fall asleep; all processes in the plant occur slowly. During this period, however, the root system can actively develop; it grows both in depth and in width.
The roots develop in search of nutrition, and as long as the root system grows and nutrition is insufficient, the fruits do not form. In this case, the pear may or may not blossom at all, or blossom, but not set fruit, forming the ovaries, but the ovaries will soon crumble all to one.
To make up for the deficiency of nutrients under the pear, you need to make fertilizers, but this should be done very carefully. For example, when the soil is saturated with nitrogen, the pear can begin to grow actively, form a vegetative mass - leaves, shoots, but not bloom.
In order to properly fill the nutrient deficiency, it is advisable to do a soil analysis in the appropriate laboratory. Only a full analysis can show which element is in short supply and which is in excess.
If fertilizers are applied without knowing their quantity in the soil, then one can over-saturate the soil with one element and not add another to the abundance, which can not only save the situation, but also aggravate it.
Imagine that we know about the composition of the soil, and even if it does not contain any important elements in abundance, that is, we need to add nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus to the soil.
You should know that the introduction of nitrogen under the pear is appropriate only in the spring. Given that the pear does not differ in record winter hardiness, if we add nitrogen to this crop in the second half of summer or, even worse, in the autumn period, the pear can continue to grow actively, shoots for winter will not have time to lignify and simply freeze. The introduction of phosphorus and potassium is possible in spring, and summer, and in autumn.
The approximate norms of fertilizers and the timing of their application are early spring (during the budding period), the next period is the beginning of summer, the next is mid-summer, and the end of feeding is the end of the first month of autumn.
At the beginning of the growing season, it usually depends on the timing of the onset of the calendar spring and can be observed from the beginning to the middle of April, the pear leaves the leaves and you can add a kilogram of completely rotted manure or humus under it with the addition of 300 g of soot. It is recommended to add nitroammophoska, having previously dissolved it in an amount of 19 g per bucket of water (10 liters) for each pear.
In early summer, plants need to be enriched with phosphorus in the form of superphosphate and potassium - potassium sulfate. Superphosphate in an amount of 13 g under a pear must be applied dry in a previously loosened and watered soil, and after fertilizing, the soil can be covered with a layer of humus. Potassium sulfate is preferably added in dissolved form in an amount of 10 g per bucket of water (10 liters).
In mid-summer, it is also advisable to add superphosphate and potassium sulfate in the same amount and in the same form as at the beginning of summer.
In autumn, it is also advisable to apply these fertilizers, reducing the dosage by half, but in the same form as in the summer.
It should also be remembered that the pear can bloom and not set fruit or drop the ovary when the soil is excessively moistened as a result of heavy rains, excessive irrigation, or near standing groundwater (optimally 2.5 m).
A pear may not bloom or bloom, but may not yield on overly acidic soils. Given that the pear prefers neutral soils, it should be liming acidic soils, applying to 1m2 200 grams of lime. But this norm depends on the acidity of the soil and its composition, that is, what is the soil - sandy, loam or chernozem.
It is possible to understand whether acidic soil can be obtained from plants growing on it: horsetail, nettle, horse sorrel indicate an increased acidity of the soil. In the event that the soil is sodded with a lawn - which can never be done and the lawn can only be allowed between the rows, but not in the near-trunk strip - or it is dug up, then you can use a set of litmus paper and a color scale to determine the acidity .
Mistakes during planting
The pear is very sensitive to improper planting: it is very important to observe the depth of the root neck and it is advisable to plant pear seedlings in relation to the cardinal points as they had previously grown in the nursery. Failure to comply with these, in fact, elementary rules can lead to severe delays at the beginning of fruiting of the pear.
Pear seedlings must be placed in the soil so that the root neck (this is the place where the roots go into the trunk, and not the place of grafting, as many people mistakenly believe) was at the soil level. If the root neck is deepened, then the pear can enter fruiting several years later than it should be. If the root neck is left high above the soil, the root system of the pear can freeze, especially in winters when there is already frost, and there is still no snow or very little snow.
In such winters, freezing of the root system is often observed, more often these are the youngest and most important roots for the plant nutrition, which although they are restored during the vegetative period, but in this case it will be banal not fruiting, it will be busy restoring the root system.
It is also important when planting pears to take into account the cardinal points. Everyone is well aware that due to the rapid development of the seedling, its root system and the aerial mass, the pear is sold in the nursery as “one-year-olds”. One-year-olds during planting can be sick for a long time and take root in a new place, thereby delaying the period of entry of the pear into fruiting. To avoid this, it is necessary to place the seedling so that its side, which was oriented to the south, is again in the south. To understand which side of the seedling was oriented south and which is north, you can carefully examine the bark of the seedling - if it is dark, as if tanned, then this is the south side, and if it is lighter, then the north.
By the way, if you have already planted the pear seedlings incorrectly, and the root neck is deepened or, on the contrary, rises significantly above the soil surface, then you can try to correct the situation. For example, when deepening the root neck, you can try to dig up the tree and add soil to its roots (of course, this is possible if the tree was planted a year, a maximum of two years ago), if the root neck rises much above the surface of the soil, then the stem can be covered with soil, well pressed her.
Pear - Wild
Sometimes, especially when buying a seedling not in the nursery, as we constantly advise, but on the market “by hand”, a pear tree can very well and actively develop, but it will not bloom for many years. This happens if you were sold not a varietal pear grafted onto a stockstock, but an ordinary pear seedling, that is, a savage.
In this case, even if you tolerate and wait for the fruits to be received, you will be disappointed - the fruits of the pear will be small and sour, and the plant itself will grow simply gigantic and may exceed ten meters in height. Unfortunately, in this case it is rather difficult to advise something intelligible in order to correct the situation. Some gardeners cut down part of the tree thereby reducing its growth, and cuttings of different varieties are grafted into the crown, but not all can do this and not everyone has such a desire. It remains to cut and uproot the tree by planting a new varietal seedling.
To understand that a savage is being sold to you is simple - you need to carefully examine the base of the pear seedling above the root neck by about five centimeters. The grafting site should be visible in this place, the trunk should not be perfectly straight from the root, there should be no thorns on the trunk, which are often characteristic of savages, and the seedling itself should not be too large, tall.
Typically, a one-year-old pear has a length of two meters, thick roots and two or three branches. Of course, much depends on the variety, for example, the Bystrinka variety can have a height of up to 2.5 meters, well-developed roots and five or six branches.
Lighting deficit
Errors can occur when choosing a location on the site. Often, gardeners, given the tallness of the pear and its spreading crown, plant a plant on a shaded area in the hope that the pear will grow over time and come out of the shade due to its height. In fact, this is of course logical, but erroneous.
The whole period while the pear will grow and stretching out, and often bending, out of the shade, it will most likely not bear fruit, and this period may be ten years or more. The fact is that the pear is sensitive to lighting, it needs plenty of light, if it is in short supply, it will not produce crops.
Of course, given the not outstanding winter hardiness of a pear, it can be planted under protection, for example, the walls of a house, fence or other large tree with a dense crown, but only if this type of protection from the cold north wind is located exclusively on the north side.
Pest damage
Another reason when a pear does not yield is the influence of pests. For example, it actively infects the pear’s kidneys and literally does not allow them to fully develop the pear throat, you can fight it with the help of the drug “Alatar”. A pest such as the apple flower beetle does harm and pear, which manifests itself in the mass destruction of flowers. With this pest, you can fight with the help of the drug "Kinmix".
The moth can also cause harm to the pear, its caterpillars penetrate the ovary and eat away the seed chamber, as a result of which the ovary falls off, and there are no fruits. You can get rid of the codling moth by treating pear plants with Aivengo. Processing can be carried out approximately in mid-May, when there are years of butterflies, and then repeat it after 2-3 weeks.
A pear gives color but no fruit
Sometimes the pear blooms profusely, but fruiting is absent, this may be for two reasons - the lack of pollination and as a result of exposure to frost.
To solve the pollination problem, it is necessary to have at least two varieties of pears blooming at the same time on the plot; they will pollinate each other, contributing to an annual and stable yield.
To increase the susceptibility of pollen from pistils, it is necessary to spray pear plants with boric acid during mass flowering, having prepared a 1% solution of it.
Solving the problem of exposure to spring frost is difficult. Frosts can destroy the ovaries already at the initial stage of development or make the flowers sterile, immune to pollen. Sometimes gardeners solve the problem with frosts by smoking areas at the most risky periods of time, but this does not always give the proper effect.
If frosts in your region are repeated annually, it is advisable to purchase varieties with late flowering, that is, autumn and winter varieties.
Conclusion We gave examples of the most common causes when a pear does not yield. Knowing these reasons, you can avoid them, and then the pear will always delight you with full crops.
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