This delicious pear produces excellent crops of large, aromatic, rounded fruit with delicious, soft white flesh and a mild flavour that literally melts in your mouth, ready to pick from October each year. Each one is wonderfully sweet and juicy.
With its lovely rustic looking, green pears tinged in reddish brown, 'Beurre Alexander Lucas' is great variety to grow, heavy cropping and fantastic eaten raw and also in cooking.
Supplied as an established tree, 150cm (5ft) tall grown on an M9 dwarfing rootstock in a 24cm pot, growing to a height and spread of 2.5m (8ft).
Care Guide
Plant fruit trees at their original soil level, firm them into the ground and water well.
Fruit trees grown in pots will need watering and feeding more regularly than those planted in the ground.
To avoid the roots becoming pot-bound, repot every year or alternate years after leaves have fallen in autumn.
Once in its final pot, a plant can be root-pruned every other year with 30 per cent of the compost refreshed. In between, replace the top couple of inches of compost.
A good mulch will help to retain water and therefore reduce the need to water as frequently, and will prevent weeds from competing.
Your pear tree will not need drastic pruning; just remove any crossing or damaged branches. Any lower branches can be removed if you want to achieve a clear trunk. Otherwise, in subsequent seasons cut back any strongly growing branches by one third to promote the formation of fruiting spurs.