pranksta, asian pear bear early. I have a couple very small chojuro still in pots that have fruitlets on them already. Those will prob drop off, but my shinseiki also is fruiting this year. It was a more mature potted tree planted last autumn. I know lots of folks say to remove early fruit but I have always let a few ripen if they last on asian pears, They tend to pump out the fruit. As long as you have a couple decent branches (maybe 1/3 inch) you will prob get some fruitlets next year if you didn't get any this year. Since it's a year later I bet they will hold on to ripen, too.

Pam in cinti

You'll see clusters of fruitlets after petal fall. Some of those fruitlets may turn yellow and fall of, some keep growing. You want to keep one biggest, healthiest-looking fruitlet per cluster.

However, your tree is young. The more fruit you keep, the more energy your tree to need to grow those fruit. The overall tree growth will slow down. Many choose to promote tree growth by pinching off fruit. I personally keep at least one fruit on my second year tree, just to taste it.

Next year, you'll have so many, you'll be busy thinning them.

All of my fruitlets must have fallen off because I see zero....unless there are a few hiding somewhere behind the thick foliage. Since you are confident in keeping one fruit, I assume that birds and squirrels are not an issue for you.

Thepranksta,

Once your A. pear tree gets going, you will understand why I keep one fruit per cluster. There will be so many of them that you don't know what to do with them. In fact, I just came back from thinning this evening. I have only 4 A.pear trees. Hosui is the youngest ( 2nd year), the others (Shinko, 20th Century and Korean Giant) are older trees. I spent one hour just thinning half of my Shinko pear tree, the smallest of the three. Everyone who grows A. pear will tell you the same thing.

By year 4, your tree will produce hundreds and maybe thousands of pears to keep you very busy.

I don't have problem with bird on pears. My birds (if I could call them that) go after my blueberries and cherries. I have squirrel problem. It's frustrating. they took all my apples but they did not have time to take all my pears. This year, I have a BB gun but I can be a softie, I don't know if I could shoot them.

You don't keep more pears on the tree for fear of birds or squirrels. You want to thin your pears so the fruit can get bigger and the tree does not spend too much energy feeding all little fruit.

My friend who did not want to thin, got pears a size of a golf ball (Koren Giant, mine was 3 times bigger) and the next year, her tree had only a few blooms.

"By year 4, your tree will produce hundreds and maybe thousands of pears to keep you very busy. "

This concerns me a bit. This is a tree that I was planning on maintaining at a low height but decided to let it go ahead and grow to full size for a little bit of privacy screen and landscape appeal. But if I have to do that much thinning, I might be better off maintaining it at the low height. Well at least either way, it seems I do not have to worry much about fruit production or birds. Thanks for the info.

I was going to start a different post for this but you seem to have a good bit of experience with Asian Pears so I might as well post here.

I noticed the spots below on the leaves. My question is...does this look like the early stages of Scab?

{{gwi:100055}}

I thinned my shiseiki,chojuro and hosui yesterday. I found it easiest to focus on the one fruit to keep, and in one clip, take out all of the extras , even part of the base.

It looks like scab. It should be treated with fungicide spray. Since I've sprayed the trees with fungicide, Immunox, I have not seen it on any of the pear trees.

I have problem with pear blister mites and some blight, though.