Why is my pear tree not fruiting?

Everything that stops an apple fruiting stops a pear fruiting too, but the weighting is different. Pear blossom opens in early to mid April in most of the UK, two to three weeks ahead of apples, straight into the part of spring where a clear night still drops below freezing. Pears also live a very long time and are far less commonly planted, so the nearest compatible pollinator may be streets away rather than next door.

Step by step

1. Establish whether it flowers at all.Flowers but no fruit is a pollination or frost problem. No flowers is age, vigour, shade or over-pruning. The two branches share almost nothing, so settle this first.
2. Check the blossom for frost damage while it is still on the tree.Open a flower and look at the centre. A frosted flower has a blackened or brown centre while the petals still look normal, and it will never set. Pears in flower are damaged at around -2°C.
3. Work out whether it is in a frost pocket.Cold air flows downhill and pools behind solid fences, walls and dense hedges. A pear at the bottom of a slope or in a walled corner will lose blossom in years when the same variety fifty metres up the garden sets fine.
4. Identify the variety and its pollination group.Most pears need a compatible variety flowering at the same time. Conference is partially self-fertile and will set a light crop of small, often seedless, curved fruit alone — which is exactly the crop people describe when they say the tree 'barely fruits'.
5. Check for incompatible pairs.Some pears cannot pollinate each other regardless of timing. Louise Bonne of Jersey and Williams' Bon Chrétien are mutually incompatible, and Doyenné du Comice needs a good partner such as Conference or Concorde to crop properly.
6. Count the years since planting.Pears are slower than apples. On Quince C expect fruit in three to four years, on Quince A five to six, and a pear on its own seedling roots can take a decade or more. There is no shortcut.
7. Look at the growth for a nitrogen problem.Long soft shoots of 60cm or more and dark leaves with little blossom means too much nitrogen, usually from lawn feed or a fed border. Stop it and apply sulphate of potash in late winter.
8. Check the pruning history.Pears fruit on spurs on wood two years old and older. Shortening all the previous year's growth every winter removes the wood that would have spurred up, and a hard-pruned pear answers with vertical water shoots.
9. Rule out pear midge if the fruitlets set and then blacken.If small fruit forms after flowering, turns black, distorts and falls in May and June, the tree is pollinating fine and pear midge is taking the crop. That is a different problem with a different answer.

Tips

• Pear blossom on a west or north wall opens later than on a south wall, which regularly saves a crop that a south wall loses to frost.
• Conference, Concorde and Beth are a reliable trio for a UK garden: they overlap in flowering and are all easy croppers.
• A pear that flowers well but sets nothing for several years running in a cold garden is a frost problem, not a pollination one, however many partners you plant.
• Fleece thrown over a small or trained pear on a clear frosty night at blossom time is the only protection that reliably works, and it must come off in the morning so pollinators can get in.

Common mistakes

• Planting a second pear without checking flowering overlap — Two pears that flower a fortnight apart do not pollinate each other. The pollination group, not the number of trees, is what matters.
• Assuming Conference is fully self-fertile — It sets a light crop alone, often small, curved and seedless. With a partner it crops properly. 'Some fruit' from a lone Conference is the tree telling you it has no pollen.
• Feeding a non-fruiting pear with general fertiliser — Nitrogen makes the problem worse, pushing growth instead of flower buds and producing the soft shoots that pear scab and canker enter.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask