I grew up visiting my grandparent’s farm in southern Pennsylvania and fondly remember the 4 Kieffer trees in a row. At the time (say 45 years ago), they seemed like large trees to me. My grandmother canned everything and I fondly recall the canned pears for lunch and they were delicious. I’m hopeful to purchase the family farm some day and possibly to live there in retirement and those 4 Kieffer pear trees are still there. My uncle who owns the farm now claims that they’re well over 100 years old now (he knows the family history and knows who was living there when they were present 100 years ago) and the trees still seem remarkably healthy and viable (they still fruit every year for what it’s worth).
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Those HS look great Matt! Might be a great year for them.
When did you graft it?
The Harrow Sweet is a tree I bought a couple years ago. I didn’t graft it.
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Early Pears are growing like weeds! The early fruits are few but gorgeous! Thankfully I have enough trees where a few from each tree will add up. I won’t have extra pears this year but I’m fortunate to have not lost them all.
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Its amazing how late your pears bloom compared to mine, I have Asian pears and they were done blooming weeks ago. They have already set fruit. I am in the Piedmont area of Virginia - not that far south from you.
I checked that little Clara Frijis tree yesterday and it looks like I should have a couple pears at least on it. Little bigger than a pea now. This cold weather will put a halt on growth for the next few days, but we needed the moisture as always so that is a plus.
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It’s slow to produce as I’ve mentioned on callery. Very good pear so far with no disease problems and I’ve grown it a long time now.
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How do you rate the texture and taste Clark? If it is good I may need to move one onto its own roots off of my franken tree.
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Unfortunately they have not fruited for me. I’ve grown one of the trees for years on callery. The fruit is reportedly very high quality.
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It seems like high quality translates into slow to come into bearing, lol.
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Clark,
My Fondante de Moulin-Lille ( or something like that) grafted in 2015, has 3 clusters of blooms.
Magness has two. Grafted 2015
Duchess has one. Grafted 2016, what a precocoius little graft!!
Hope some fruit will set. Very excited.
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What rootstock do you have them on?
If you are asking me, those varieties were grafted on to my William’s Pride tree, not a rootstocks.
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Yes, I was wondering how you got them to fruit so fast, I have magness on my big franken tree, I hope I get similar results
2015 was my second year of grafting so I made several mistakes. One of them was grafting on bottom branches. Those grafts are shaded quite a bit.
I am surprised myself that Magness is blooming two years later. Hope yours will be soon.
My Blake’s Pride itself was grafted on OHxF 97 from Schlabach.
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I have a magness on ohxf 87 that I grafted this year but it is very small but eventually I think it will make a much nicer tree than my franken tree.
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My tree is only 3rd leaf on OHxF87 and had probably 20 blossoms on it this year.
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I hope I have a similar result in a couple of years
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