Sconticut:

I am not certain what kind of help you are looking for here, since you seem to know what you want to do. You don't say how old the pear trees are, but if they are 15 feet tall, it must be a few years. Have you done any branch spreading? That's how I prepared my pear tree for open vase form, using the central leader as a stop for one end of the spreaders. Eventually, when the branches were in place, I cut off the leader completely. If you want to be able to reach the branches with the low-ladder, no-ladder method, the lateral branches should start at about 4-5 feet up the trunk. I leave 5 or 6 branches around the trees, and it took about 3 years before they were spread and in place so I could cut off the leader.

You can prune a healthy pear tree just about any time of the year and it will pop back strongly. The danger is a lot of unwanted vertical growth from the lateral branches, which you can control to some extent by pruning in late midsummer, or immediately after picking the fruit. This will moderate the vigor of the tree and increase fruitfulness. Do not prune in the dormant season, or small vertical branches will emerge like grass the following spring.

Don't let the trees continue to grow upward, which serves no useful purpose. If you are satisfied with the placement and height of the laterals you already have, you can prune out the central leader right now.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

A lot of good advice can be contradictory of other good advice which can make things confusing. For instance, I have no problem doing structural pruning of pears during dormancy and just wiping off the resultant surge of sprouting shoots during early summer. Perhaps this works fine for me because fireblight is not as much an issue in the northeast as it is further south.

Is FB the reason you manage pears without dormant pruning, Don? I've always wondered if using exclusively summer pruning during dry periods might help control FB in pears but have never seen any corraborating research.

I have seen research of apple pruning that showed that summer pruning did not reduce returning shoot growth the following spring (Dr. Farree). But this was done on apple trees on dwarfing rootstock.

Thank you very much for your advice. I found it helpful. Trees were planted as three foot bare root specimens five years ago. Yes I have done lateral branch spreading as far up as I can reach with a short ladder. Your suggestions about pruning during the growing season has resulted in my doing a bit more research on the net and I have found some other info. I was under the assumption that fruit trees could only be pruned in the freezing cold of Jan. and Feb.while freezing ones nether side off. Makes life easier for one approaching the Oct. of life. Why in the hell do old men plant fruit trees, anyway?
Sconticut

Because young men can't afford too, and by gosh someone needs to do it.