Pear Blossoms
Our Comice and Barlett pear trees are full of blooms right now. The Bartlett pear tree (second picture) seems to have more blossoms than it has ever had. Even our 3 year old red Bartlett pear has blooms for the first time. Our pear trees consistently produce a crop of pears that is proportional to their spring bloom. The Bartlett in particular gets pears every time it blooms, unlike our Blenheim apricot tree, which was full of blooms in early March, but has no fruit on it now. The heavy rains we had here in mid-March seem to have damaged the newly forming apricots. Although, in some past years, our Bartlett pear tree did not have any blooms.
The newly forming fruit on pear trees seems to be less affected by rain than other fruits like apricots and sweet cherries. However, Comice and Bartlett pears are of course prone to fireblight which can cause severe branch die back and can reduce the crop. Although our pears have had touches of fireblight in past years, it has never affected more than a few branches on each tree. In general, fireblight is not a serious problem in our area, because the month of April when pears bloom here tends to be relatively dry.
April 16 2011 08:42 pm | Pears