Pear tree pruning, the golden rules

Oh dear. No doubt you saw the title was about pruning and your heart sank just a little. Yet another article with neat pictures of trees saying cut ‘here, here and here’, with the only problem being that your tree looks nothing like the pictures.

And I mean, why bother? You’ve almost certainly driven past a crab apple tree on a motorway slip road and noticed how it was laden with fruit, despite years of neglect. Or huge overgrown trees in an old orchard that haven’t seen a pruning saw in years but which still produce crops year after year. Despite your misgivings, however, annual pruning is actually one of the most