hey folks. as i stated in a previous post, i grafted harvest queen and sekel pear scions onto my mtn. ash and they took and are growing well . the place i got the scions said they were z4 hardy. upon further searches other sites say they are z5 hardy. the mtn. ash is z3 hardy and I’m in z3b/4a. will the z3 rootstock help the pear scions to be more hardy or are they just as susceptible as if on their own rootstock?
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I’ve done similar and am hopeful that rootstock will give some extra hardiness!
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I had Seckel on a few Amelanchier and it proved not to be hardy in my Z4a. I understand it to be a Z5 pear as well so I haven’t tried it again. Root stock won’t pass cold hardiness to the scion.
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Steve, I’ve been finding cold hardiness increase in the frame tree concept, where grafting onto branches up from the low trunk region helps things survive if the lower portion of the tree is hardy. Bernie Nikolai in Canada writes about this quite a bit, you may have seen some of his work. That said, I also have a lot of different pears grafted on OHxF87, and my Harvest Queen surprised me by being one of the few that died last winter. I’m not thinking it is very hardy. I’d suggest you graft a bunch of different types onto that Mt. Ash, and some will probably demonstrate good hardiness.
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i have a few more i have mind that ill try grafting next spring. just bites that these are growing so well and won’t make it. oh well… theres a lot more branches i can graft to.
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