You want the sweet, classic fruit from a Bartlett pear tree. That’s why you planted it, right? A classic American garden tree, but here’s the catch: By harvest season, your Bartlett may have no fruit, just naked branches. And no, it wasn’t a problem of water or soil, typicaly. It was a matter of pollination.
Bartlett pears is self-unfruitful. This pear has one biological limitation… It cannot fertilize itself. It has the appearance of fully formed flowers but can absorbs nothing on its own. It require another tree nearby as a pollinator. If you don’t have a compatible variety (for cross-pollination), it might set perhaps five percent of its blooms. That’s going to mean smaller-than-average fruit that probably falls off before ripening, it is not a good way to close out the growing season.
How to Help Your Bartlett Pear Tree Produce Fruit
Planning is part of the solution: Planting a pollinizer variety of pear (within roughly one hundred feet) near Bartlett is what’s needed. The proximity enables bees to travel from one tree to the next on their foraging outings. Which varieties are best? There’s a chart for that. But the key element is overlap in bloom times. Two weeks’ difference between the Bartlett and its partner tree, and it’s missed. You want overlap.
The Bartlett blooms roughly halfway through the season, so other mid bloomers like Anjou and Bosc is good choices. These varieties overlap somewhat, providing a wide window of time when the Bartlett’s stigmas can recieve pollen while the other varieties are also blooming. Anjou is another top choice, and Bosc, hardy even up North, is strong and dependable for producing its own fruit. Early bloomers, such as Clapp’s Favorite, would of been good choices if your springs is fickle and frost might arrive late or early. That way you know there will always be pollen around when that Bartlett may bud prematurely under warmer conditions.
Who carries the pollen? Commercial fruit farmers place hives on each acre of land; honey bees are key. But so are the native bee, such as bumble bees and mason bees. They frequently begin their day early when it’s still cool, flying in conditions that ground honey bees. To encourage native bees, plan for flowering cover crops in the spaces between tree row. Don’t let them bloom at the same time than your pears, or you’ll draw bees away from your trees during that all-important week.
If you have limited space, how you lay out your orchard make a difference. You want to be able to get close enough to your Bartlett to pollinate it efficienty… Ideally within about thirty feet. To that end, if you’re running short on space, you can graft a branch of another variety (a pollinizer) onto your primary tree, which will make sure you’re in range but not take up ground space as a separate trunk. With larger plantings, alternate every fourth or sixth row with a pollinizer to ensure no tree is ever too far from a pollen source.
After getting the variety in place and spacing it properly, the key to good care from this point on will be careful attention to management at bloom time. No spraying, ever, with any insecticide while flowers are open; that kills the pollinator organisms required to set fruit. Also, keep the canopy open: The light needs to reach all those branches with spurs on them and the bees need an easy passageway to travel back and forth. If frost threatens again after bloom (below freezing), use sprinklers or wind machines to protect.
After petals have fallen, look around for little green fruitlets where each flower was. That’s a signal you got things right. Helpful insects and a few good neighbors make a lonesome tree a reliabel source of yearly produce.