I have a pear tree that is supposed to have three different types of pears. The tree is six years old and very healthy. The pears that I see are as small as BBs and get no bigger. Any ideas as to this problem?
"BBs"? Basket balls? Surely not! Depending on what size a "BB" is, maybe the rootstock has taken over and given you a wild pear of some sort? Callery Pears (fruit about 2cm diameter) are sometimes used for rootstocks.
Michael, a BB is what is shot out of a BB gun as in "A Christmas Story". A BB is a little larger than the head of a stick match. If the root stock took over, is there anything that can be done?
Thanks! No pear has fully-developed fruit that small, so something has prevented the fruit from developing. Most likely is failure of pollination due to bad weather (e.g. frost or heavy rain) when it was flowering, but there could be other reasons, such as a shortage of bees. The up-side is that it doesn't mean the rootstock has taken over, and if the pollination is better next year, you should get good fruit.
Thanks for the info. I hope you are right. This is supposed to have three different types of pears on it. There are only one type and threy are the small ones I mentioned. This tree is self pollinating, but if only one type of pear blossoms form would this restrict the right type of pollination?
If only one of the branches flowered, that could happen if there are no other pear trees nearby for alternative pollen sources.
the only way the rootstock could take over is if it suckers and you let it grow bigger than the grafts or if the grafts die and the rootstock sprouts and grows
