Your neighbor was right. Most pear trees need another pear tree to help them set fruit even if those trees are, technically, self-fertile. For Bartlett, the recommended pollinator is D'Anjou.

Although some young pear trees set fruit in the third year after transplantation into their permanent growing site, many do not flower and set fruit until they are six years old or older. There's an old saying about pear trees that reflects the issue of flowering/fruiting. It is "Plant pears for your heirs."

Pears, by the way, really struggle in Oklahoma due to the prevalence of Fire Blight. Often, by the time they reach the proper size and age to set fruit, the pear trees become infected by fire blight and die. Attempting to grow pears here can be very frustrating.

Have your pruned them? And, if so, do you prune them at the proper time in late winter? Also, even once they finally start blooming, their blooms are often caught by a late frost which kills the flowers and eliminates the possibility of getting a harvest. I know yours haven't flowered yet, but even once they do flower, you may have a hard time getting a crop.

Because of our often warm spring weather mixed with intermittent late freezes or frosts, growing fruit trees in Oklahoma is iffy at best. Apple and pear trees often suffer from fire blight, apricot and cherry trees commonly lose their flowers or small fruit to late frosts, and peaches and plums (the most reliable fruit trees here, I think) have to deal with fungal disease and also tend to lose their crops to late freezes, hail or strong winds about 60%-70% of the time. I am happy if I get plums and peaches 1 year out of 3. Don't get me wrong because I'd rather harvest a crop every year, but it isn't going to happen here.

If I were to plant pear trees here, I'd probably go with Warren, Kieffer, Orient, Magness or Maxine. And, to get good pollination, I've have to plant the right combination of those trees. For example, I might choose to plant both Kieffer and Orient because they pollinate one another.

Dawn

Are you looking for a local source in or near your county, or are you open to the idea of ordering online and paying shipping and handling?

I'd rather buy locally, but I don't have a lot of local options here in extreme southcentral OK, so I usually drive to the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area to find exactly the variety I want OR order on line from Womack Nursery (Texas-based so their rootstocks are usually good for us) or someone like Stark Bros.

Dawn

Their stock is really small, but at least you can get a great variety of trees, berries, grapevines, etc.

Plus, you can get your trees, prepruned for a dollar, which is nice, since they are experienced in proper pruning and it gets the trees off to a good start.

I bought 12 trees from them last year, and they were hardy and all of them took off very well, except one, and they sent a replacement this fall.

If you order late blooming peach trees, you are more likely to get a harvest.

I just wish I knew more about managing an orchard. Like everything else, I suppose I can learn by lots of reading, trial and error. And lots of advice from on this web :)

Believe it or not, some very loyal employees who lost their jobs continued to come "to work" when they could and watered/pruned/maintained the nursery stock on their own time for no pay. Their dedication to the company and to the plants paid off and may be the sole reason Stark Bros. has survived and come out of bankruptcy. I think all the subsidiary companies were sold off and then the original Stark Bros. was split into two divisions with different investors. The company is back on track and expects to be back to their original size/scale/scope by about 2015-2016. I haven't bought anything from them in ages though.

I believe some of the investors in the "new" Stark Bros. were employed by the original firm, and I am amazed at what they were able to do....keeping the plants alive on a wing and a prayer. As you noted, the stock is low but they are slowly rebuilding....it just takes time to rebuild nursery stock that has been seriously depleted.

I'm hoping this company can return to its' former prominence because it always had a huge selection and you could find whatever you wanted from them, back before it was sold in the 1990s.

We've lost so many companies that were once major players in the seed/plant industry. It's nice to see one of them survive and come back.

If you want to grow peaches, here's a few varieties that grow well in Oklahoma: Redhaven, Sentinel, Ranger, Loring, Glohaven, Stark Encore, and Ouachita Gold. Of those, my favorites are Redhaven and Ranger.

Other fruit trees that could be grown in most parts of Oklahoma include apple, pear, nectarine, plum, fig, jujube (at least in the southern half of the state--not sure how cold-hardy they are), cherry, or apricot. If you want to grow fruit, you also could grow grapes, blackberries, dewberries, strawberries (very high maintenance), and blueberries.

I think apples are marginal unless you have a perfect microclimate for them, which includes the absence of cedar trees anywhere near your property since it serves as the host plant for Cedar-Apple Rust. I don't grow pears or apples myself because of fire blight. In our climate, even trees that are said to be resistant to fire blight generally contract the disease at one point or another.

Dawn

PEARS: This is a hard question to answer because there are so many variables. First, if I were you, I'd contact my local agriculture extension agent (each county has one) and I'd ask how severe/common fireblight is on pears in that county. If you are in an area where fireblight is a huge problem, it might not be worth your while to try to grow pears. Bartlett has extremely low tolerance of fireblight, so the odds are that your trees will be affected by fireblight about the time they are the right size to start bearing pears. If you decide to keep them, I'd get a D'anjou but I wouldn't buy big trees. Larger trees take much longer to adjust to being transplanted, so go small. My favorite size to plant is little whips that are 12" to 18" tall. I planted some 12" to 18" tall oaks 7 and 8 years ago, and many of them now exceed 15' to 18' in height and are extremely healthy. Why? Because their roots/topgrowth grew together and the trees were never stressed by trying to grow more topgrowth than the roots could support (a common problem when you buy larger trees in containers from nurseries). When buying trees, smaller is better in the long term.

Honestly, I love pears but I won't bother with them here because the odds of losing them to fireblight are so high. But, that's just me and I am very conservative. I don't like to spend precious resources (money, time, water and soil) on plants that are going to disappoint me.

If you love the look of your trees, can enjoy them whether they fruit or not, etc. and space is not an issue, why not keep them and enjoy them though? (See, I could argue this either way. LOL) If they are strictly for pear production and space is limited, I'd be tempted to remove them and replace them with fireblight-resistant varieties.

With the peaches, you don't have to have a pollinator. Both my dad and I have grown Redhaven when it was the only peach tree in our yards, and it has always produced just fine. It has replaced Ranger and Sentinel as my favorite peach. Almost all peach trees are self-fruitful, and I won't plant one that isn't.

Hope this info helps.

Dawn