Tony, was that 20th century leafed out when you bought it or did it leaf out while waiting to get planted? It looks very unhappy. Bareroot trees that leafed our before planting have often died on me. I am about 95% sure that is not fireblight on it - pears turn black when they die anyway. Even the leaves without any black are wilting badly. There isn't much you can do now however besides wait and hope. The planting looks very good. I would prune them back more to get a lower tree.

Scott

Not sure what you have going on with the trees from the pictures provided. I'm no expert anyways so with any luck one will come along. My only advice is that you keep them well watered but not over watered for the first few weeks. I have two asian pear trees in 25 gallon tree pots that I purchased nearly three years ago. Both were 5ft-6ft tall when I purchased them and so far I have not recieved one peice of fruit because they refuse to bloom at the same time. I have been told that this is a fruit tree you plant for your grand children becuase thats how long it will likely be before they are mature enough to hold flowers long enough to be able to cross pollinate.

I hope you have better luck than I did. I think I will be offing to give mine away in the Arizona Gardening forum or on Craigslist.

Thanks for the input guys.

Scott, the 20th Century had leaves upon purchase, unfortunately (from your experiences). Drat. I will prune it as an effort to hopefully give it a chance...

Thanks much.

I have 20th Century, Shinseiki and Hosui. They started bearing a little in year 3 and quite heavily by year 4 and 5. This is the 7th year since I planted them bare root in the winter of 2001.

One probably stays too wet in its location and has trouble with fireblight. Two shinseikis in that location and the second is still struggling. The others all have excellent vigor.