Aged pear tree.

[Austin]

Hi All
I have an old pear tree in an old orchard. The tree is very tall and seems to fruit very good each year. Unfortunately the fruit is covered in what I would call black spots or scab. When one peels the skin off,I have a lovely juicy pear.
What can I do to improve the quality of the skin? and should I trim a lot of the high branches .
Thanks for any help
Austin.
P.S I live in Co Tyrone in Northern Ireland, pretty far north

[Rhona]

Hi Austin, we exactly the same thing last year when we moved and - there's an ancient pear tree in the garden and it was covered with undersized fruit with black spots. It hadn't been pruned for years.

We (well, Mr R) pruned it really hard, taking out one in three smaller branches, those little spurs that grow straight up, and some of the larger crossing-over ones too. It was quite dramatic, but this year we've a huge harvest of much healthier, bigger fruit.

Good luck!

[Austin]

Hi Rhona
Thanks for the information, When did you get the pruning done?
Cheers Austin

[Nicos]

I've never pruned one myself- but know that Nov- March when the tree is dormant is the best time.

I'd also try and do it when you're not expecting a frost.

I have found this...

Apples and pears: winter pruning / RHS Gardening Advice

and if you play around on youtube , there are some videos of people actually pruning fruit trees.
(I always find it easier to follow what I've seen rather than read.)

Oh- and welcome to the Vine!

[FB.]

Scab is not easily controllable on larger trees.
Basically, you'll either have to accept the scab and enjoy the tree for its beauty, or you'll need a full-on spray routine (which is not easy for a big tree). A good tidy-up of tangled branches might help. Raking up the fallen leaves and fruits might help to remove the disease from the nearby area, but your efforts will be wasted if there are other trees nearby which will re-infect your tree next year.

Scab is caused by fungal spores germinating on the fruit in persistently damp conditions.
Some varieties have resistance, but even the resistant varieties have good or bad years, depending on how favourable the climate for disease. Sometimes simply being caught at just the wrong moment by an attack of scab can cause the tree to have a lot of damaged fruit.
2010 was a very bad year for diseases - even some of my scab-resistant apples lost fruit to scab-induced splitting, due to a lot of rain.

If a resistant variety is grown too widely across the country (especially wet areas), they lose resistance as the diseases adapt - just like hospital superbugs - MRSA, GISA, ESBL, AMPC, VRE - adapt to overcome antibiotics.
Conference pear and Bramley apple used to be very resistant to scab, but they were/are grown so extensively in the UK that a few strains of the scab diseases have now adapted to attack them.