How much growth should I expect from a pear graft from this year?
Some of my peach grafts from this spring have grown more than 3ft with a lot of branches. But some of my pears have only grown enough to show it’s taken and not dead. About 6 inches. Is this typical of pear grafts? Just curious.
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It can be depending on what your grafting them to and what the scion is. Pears can grow a huge amount in a year also. Leona as an example is a fast grower http://www.growingfruit.org/t/leona-pear/6481 whereas Seckel is slower.
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It was grafted to newly planted moonglow. Maybe it needed couple of years to get situated before getting grafted on to.
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Moon glow is not a real fast grower in my experience.
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I have a small pear on ornamental rootstock of some kind, ts hardy. It appears to be a vigorous growing tree. It has a fork low on the trunk just above the graft. I would like to get a second variety on this tree. My thought is to cut the dominant leader off in the spring and add a new pear, the thought being that the smaller side of the remaining ts hardy would speed up growing and the new graft variety would take and the tree could grow two more balanced leaders. Thoughts?
I can see the temptation but I can’t recommend it. Better to just have one leader or a proper vase.
Is the grafted portion ornamental or just the rootstock?
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Just the rootstock is ornamental. I tried something similar on Altoona pear grafted on ohxf 87. It had a weak secondary leader which I put clarks little yellow pear on. All summer I kept the new growth pruned off of Altoona trying to give little yellow a chance to grow.
You’re probably right about leaving it alone but that rootstock will make a 40 foot tree and ts hardy is a vigorous grower. I woul like to at least have two types of pears growing on it. That would be a lot of ts hardy pears…
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Well, you might consider cutting the central leader at about waist height and grafting a second variety there. Keep the lower growth as a nurse branch and then remove altogether. If you liked you could add a third variety about about six feet. As the tree grew vertically you’d probably want to keep it to less than 12 feet. I almost think that’s too high (and as I get older my wife gets more nervous when I’m on the ladders.)
Limiting the scaffolds to about three per section, trained to the horizontal, would leave you with a manageable tree and put the tree into production reasonably quickly, which would further help limit its adolescent growth.
Just one of many possible approaches!
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Sound advice mark, most of my trees a young and small with the exception of an old peach and pear so long term pruning plans are a bit of a mystery to me.
They’re something of a mystery to me, too. And lots of people here have way more experience than I, so if they speak up differently listen to them too!
:-)M
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@Derby42
Jason,
I like the idea but I would cut off that extra stick and graft it elsewhere as a backup. Then I would top the central leader where there are buds so the branches go mostly horizontal and then I would graft one of them to something else. The reason why is long term that sharp angle will split in an ice storm and 10 years from now when it happens it will be painful to lose half a tree. Pears are notorious for the problem and please don’t ask me how I know. They don’t always split but wind and ice storms happen and it’s something I would avoid knowing what I do now.
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I understand, it sounds like both you and mark recommend multi graftiythe scaffolds and not letting a double leader develop
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Exactly! Plus, it’s too low for my tastes.
Right! When the leader puts out branches below your cuts you want to select the few you like, and if you want you can then graft one of those over to another variety. (You can even encourage certain buds by knocking the bark above them.)
It always reassures me when I think Clark and I agree on pears.
:-)M
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Yes, what they said.
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Rind grafts aka bark grafts take longer than cleft to heal but in time they all heal over. Im curious how yours is healing up @Derby42? Would love to see the graft unions.
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I will try and take some photos, and post. I don’t know if they will ever heal up completely. They were some large limbs to cut off. I should have used more scions on each and later cut some off. I had my large KG break this winter in some high winds.
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I hope you keep some scionwoods to regraft.
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I did, I have not had much luck with kg here, it cracks so badly some years that there is nothing left
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Here are updated photos of these bark grafts. I believe way back in this thread olpea said I needed more grafts per stump to keep the bark alive. I have placed many back up grafts on small branches that developed the year after I cut the main limbs.
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Yes the down side to rind grafts is you do need a lot of grafts to keep the stump alive. I graft every spot when i rind graft with small toothpick sized scions if its available. Smaller wood is better because you get more in less space. The other problem is some grafts dont take.
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