A fruit that repays a little forethought

Pears have a reputation for being difficult, and it is not entirely undeserved. They flower early, when frost and cold winds are still about, and they need a decent amount of summer warmth to ripen anything worth eating. Plant one in a cold, exposed corner of heavy clay and you will wait years for a crop of hard, gritty fruit. Get the basics right, though, and a pear tree will crop steadily for decades, often outliving the person who planted it.

The good news for British gardeners is that pears suit our climate better than many people assume, provided you give them sun, shelter and drainage. The key is to treat the planting position as seriously as you would for a peach or an apricot, rather than tucking a pear into whatever gap is left over.

Choosing the right spot

Pears want as much sun as you can spare, and they want it during late summer when the fruit is swelling and ripening. A south- or west-facing wall is ideal, because the masonry soaks up heat during the day and releases it slowly at night, which also helps protect early blossom from light frosts.

Shelter matters just as much as sunshine. Strong winds batter the blossom, dry out the leaves and can snap brittle branches laden with fruit. A hedge, fence or open trellis that filters wind without creating a still, damp pocket is far better than a solid barrier.

• Avoid frost pockets — the bottom of a slope or a hollow where cold air collects.
• Keep trees away from the rain shadow of large buildings and from dense, overhanging trees.
• Allow room for the eventual spread: a mature bush pear can easily reach 3–4 metres.

If space is tight, train pears as cordons, espaliers or fans against a wall or along a fence. Pears take to this treatment beautifully and will crop generously in a fraction of the space.

Soil, rootstocks and planting

Pears are less fussy about soil than apples in one respect — they tolerate heavier, slightly alkaline ground — but they absolutely hate sitting in water. Damp, poorly drained soil encourages canker and root rot, and pears on quince rootstocks are especially sensitive to it.

Aim for a soil that holds moisture but drains freely, ideally with a pH around 6.5. If your ground is heavy clay, plant on a slight mound or improve a generous planting hole with well-rotted compost and grit. On very thin chalk, dig in plenty of organic matter and be prepared to water regularly.

Rootstock choice controls the size of the tree:

• Quince C — the most dwarfing, good for cordons and small gardens.
• Quince A — semi-dwarfing, the dependable choice for most garden trees.
• Pyrodwarf or seedling pear — vigorous, suitable for large gardens and standards.

Plant bare-root trees between November and March, when the ground is workable but not frozen. Set the tree so the graft union sits a good hand's width above soil level, firm it in, stake it securely and mulch around — but not touching — the trunk.

Pollination: the essential partner

Most pears are not self-fertile, and even those described as partially self-fertile crop far better with company. You need a second variety that flowers at the same time, so check the flowering season — early, mid or late — and choose a partner from the same group or the one next to it.

Conference is the most reliable garden pear in Britain, partially self-fertile and tolerant of cooler conditions. Good partners include Concorde, Beth, Louise Bonne of Jersey and Williams' Bon Chrétien. For a wall, the superb-flavoured Doyenné du Comice is worth the extra care it demands. If there is genuinely no room for two trees, a neighbour's pear within a few hundred metres will often do the job, as will a labelled branch grafted onto your own tree.

Pruning and training

Pears are naturally upright and produce most of their fruit on short spurs on older wood. Prune them lightly: hard cutting encourages a thicket of vigorous, unproductive shoots that take years to settle down. Winter is the time for structural work on bush and standard trees, removing dead, crossing or overcrowded branches.

For trained forms, summer pruning in late July and August is the trick. Shorten sideshoots back to a few leaves above the basal cluster, which keeps growth in check and encourages flowering spurs. Remember that a few varieties carry fruit at the tips of one-year-old shoots as well as on spurs, so leave the leaders alone and only shorten shoots that have already cropped.

Watering, thinning and harvest

Young trees need thorough watering for their first two or three seasons, particularly from June to August while fruit is swelling. After the natural June drop, thin the remaining fruitlets to one per cluster, spacing them around 10–15cm apart. It feels brutal, but the fruit you leave will be noticeably larger and better flavoured.

Watch for pear midge, which turns young fruitlets black and causes them to drop, and for pear rust, the bright orange leaf spots that appear when a juniper grows nearby. Pick up fallen fruitlets to break the midge cycle, and keep an eye out for canker on the branches.

Pick pears slightly underripe, when the fruit parts from the spur with a gentle twist, and ripen them indoors. Unlike apples, pears ripen from the inside out, so a pear left to soften on the tree is usually brown at the core. Bring them in, store them cool at around 3°C, and take them out a few days before you plan to eat them. There is little in a British garden more satisfying than a bowl of home-grown Comice in October.