I planted two Harrowsweet pears this year (on OHxF87) and one Seckel on whatever Stark Brothers considers a dwarf root (maybe OHxF333?). There were definitely better roots on the Seckel and it was planted into a mounded area where I had amended my Virginia clay soil with some peat, composted cow manure and sandy topsoil, plus a little lime. I know the common wisdom is not to amend the soil for trees, but I had prepared the area for other things before deciding to add the Seckel. It was just a whip, but it is growing great with 18 inches of growth on the top bud and a bunch of the buds on the side. Here’s what it looks like.
My 2 Harrowsweet pears on the other hand where planted into mounded areas with mostly native clay soil. I did not trim them, but maybe I should have. All the trees went in about the same time and have been kept adequately watered. They get about 8 hours of sun, although these pictures were taken at the end of the day so they look a bit shady. Both of the Harrowsweet pears leafed out okay (although some good looking buds didn’t leaf out and have pretty much just sat there). As opposed to the Seckel with its vegetative growth, the leaf clusters are all tight little rosettes, so maybe they’re fruit spurs in the making? They definitely had less root than the Seckel and they’re in heavier soil, so maybe they’re busy building new roots and I made a mistake by not topping them. Either way, since they are young trees I’d like to get them growing. Here is one of the HS trees.
It might look a bit yellowish in the picture, but that is just the shot. Everything looks healthy, but just isn’t growing much. I’ve given them a shot of miracle grow when I was putting it on my Tomatoes, but nothing else.
Any thoughts on what to do to get them growing, or should I just be patient?
From what I see at this point I would not be concerned. Varieties have different growing habits. Those two you have are representative of my experiences with both, the Harrow varieties tend to be less vigorous at the start of evey growing season for me.
Zendog, as a frame of reference here is a picture of my Harrowsweet on OHxF333 I got from Granpa’s and planted in December. It is growing in unamended Ga. clay with no supplemental irrigation and is about 2 1/2 feet. I did prune to about 20" at planting. I remember Allen mentioning a while back that it is very important when planting pear whips to give them the knee high whack.
Turkey Creek: Thanks that helps put me a bit at ease. I just went back and looked closely and see a few places on each Harrowsweet tree where it looks like a new vegetative shoot is starting, so hopefully I’ll see some good growth soon.
Chris: Thanks for that picture. It makes me hopeful for what I may see even on my clay soil. I’m hoping that the smaller root system and the fact that I didn’t cut it back hard has just made it pause for a while to put the energy into the roots.
The OHXF rootstocks do not transplant well and often take time to establish. I assume that is why commercial growers mostly stick with seedling rootstock here in the east, judging from ACN availability.
Harrow Sweet is as vigorous as Seckel in my experience with scores of both over the years. They actually have similar growth habits- really nice shaped trees.
Also, even same species pears I get from the nursery can vary quite a bit in their vigor the first season.
To my knowledge ACN grows their Euro pears on x97 and their Asian on Beta. We currently grow all of our pears in the nursery on x87 and we see no significant transplant shock. 3 weeks into the growing season we have 6" of new growth on most of our pears that were moved in March.
Turkey Creek Trees, you are correct. Somewhere along the way ACN changed rootstocks (I’ve been ordering from them for 25 years) and I failed to notice or if I noticed, I forgot.
Years ago I read an article in Pomona about OHXF rootstocks being relatively sluggish in establishing and just held onto that notion whether or not it is “rooted” in reality. I did get a number of Asian pears on OHXF 97 rootstocks a while back (from ACN) that did seem notably slower than others on Bet, which reinforced my prejudice.
Dave Wilson ships it’s European Pears on OHxF333 semi-dwarfing rootstock. My experience with my own trees and those of hundreds of customers is that it works great in southern CA residential areas where controlling the size of the tree is paramount. Now I know that @Drew51 likes to point out that southern CA weather is different than many other parts of the U.S. but I’d counter that over 10% of the U.S. residential population lives here.
Yeah…except that it’s not true, in fact according to wiki, it’s not even close to being true. S. Cal. 22.68 million. That’s a lot, but the US population is around 319 million. I’m only decent at mathematics, but Ray Charles can see them numbers don’t work.
It is a more accurate qualifier as the word residential only defines where people live after work. But you could go further by suggesting that S. CA residents are also probably much more likely than residents of much of the rest of the country to grow fruit in their yards. It is so much easier to do there- at least when there is adequate water.
Pears are easy to graft and don’t require a great deal of space on full sized root stocks, so I think even small yards are suited for full sized pear trees- at least for pear lovers.
Thanks for asking. They are all doing well, although the Seckel had a pretty big setback.
The two Harrowsweets grew well after their slow start and are now about 10 feet tall. I keep them fairly narrow (they’re on the sides of a garden path) with summer pruning and am also keeping them at their present height. There were a few flowers at second leaf, but no pears formed. Last year (3rd leaf) there were a ton of pears on both trees, but unfortunately when they were still small fruitlets codling moths got every single one of them, so I decided to strip them all since they all had worms and put the effort into building up the branching and shape. This year there were a ton of flowers, but with late cold snaps and rain leading to few pollinators and no other pears flowering at the same time there was terrible fruit set. My total crop, baring squirrels, will be 3 pears on one of the trees that are hopefully safe in ziplock bags. Now I’ll just have to figure out when they’re actually ripe here. I put a few grafts of a red flesh pear on branches of one of them and a top of a Jilin asian pear (at about 7 feet high) and put a top of Elliot on the other one. The grafts are for a little variety and also hopefully better pollination. All scion courtesy of @BobVance.
The Seckel was doing great when I planted it until Fall of its first year in the ground when suddenly all foliage yellowed and dried up. The bark changed color most of the way down on the trunk and just above where I saw the change I found a borer hole. I cut it off below the borer, leaving only a 6 inch stub when it was dormant and the following year a bunch of shoots came up. I decided to keep it a multi-shoot pear “shrub” and grafted Jilin and Korean Giant onto 2 shoots and left 2 shoots as Seckel. I had a delicious pear from it last year (3rd leaf, but second leaf after the big decapitation), but this year, even though there were more flowers the same poor pollination left it with no pears. The Jilin was grafted on the lowest sprout and hasn’t been very vigorous at that low point, but did flower this year after just being grafted last year, so hopefully the bloom will overlap the Seckel or at least the nearby Harrows.
So like most fruit growing, this year ain’t perfect, but I’m very hopeful about next year!
