Pear tree

Uptomeneck

Hi, I have an old pear tree which seems to be growing one sided and straggly the trunk is old and knarled can you advise me if and how I can promote growth on the side that's missing and obviously the part that seems to be over growing.

Many thanks, Larry Lane

pansyface

Sorry your photo isn't appearing for some reason. Anyway, if it's an old tree there is probably an old reason for its lopsidedness. Maybe an injury when it was young. Maybe bad pruning. Or maybe it got more light on one side and grew better there.

Uptomeneck

i will try and get picture up,thanks

 

pansyface

It doesn't look too bad to me. I think it's probably been growing towards the sun.?

BobTheGardener

Looks ok to me too but to answer your question, this is what to do:

Prune a few inches from the tips of the strongly growing branches (which you don't want to grow any more), now.  This is called 'summer pruning' which will restrict their growth and encourage fruiting spurs to develop on them.

For the weaker branches which you do want to grow more, prune those in the winter when they are dormant and cut them back by one third.  This will encourage new growth in the spring.  The harder you prune, the stronger the growth will be but don't prune branches by more then half their length.  Also, don't winter prune more than about a third of all the branches on the tree each year.

Repeat this process each year until the tree has developed the shape you want.  After that, only prune in late summer.  It's actually quite easy if you follow these simple rules.