I want to get 1 or 2 cultivars eventually. Medlar can be grafted on to pears. Medlar are cross compatible with Hawthorns. Even more weird is that they produce graft chimera with hawthorns.
If you want access Go the USDA, Corvallis keeps Medlar in the repository. Corvallis. Dont worry about everything being marked unavailable. Corvalllis does that during the off season.
I grew several varieties and the difference was minimal. Some were supposed to be bigger (Puciu Big or something like that) but they were not appreciably bigger.
I wouldn’t bother the overworked USDA staff to get any obscure varieties, just get any variety from a nursery.
If I can find a cheaper alternative, I’ll settle for a nursery (over $40 for a tree is too much for me; EL doesn’t have a smaller size apparently). Otherwise, I’ll probably try Corvallis.
I wouldn’t mind acquiring Titan as well; it seems to lack astringency, though it’s possibly more sour than Desertnaja. I don’t really mind sour as long as it’s not intensely mouth-puckering.
Hawthorn figures strongly in my plans, as I figure it seems more adaptable than the other pommes, but I also hope to try low chill apples and pears, and a few other pomme species. I’m actually working out the chromosome counts for most of the major (and a few of the minor) crops in the Rose family. Perhaps I should post it somewhere here when I’m done. If I can’t execute all my projects here in PR, I’ll have to borrow my sister’s yard for the purpose over in the states. Is Austin Texas too far south for some of them? I’m not sure Amelanchier can take much heat.
Do medlars require sprays for insects like apples do? Are they hardy in zone 3/4? I always like to experiment with new things, but it doesn’t sound like they are worth the effort if sprays are required.
My graft dies back when the winters are bad in my zone 5, maybe seedlings would be the way to go as they don’t seem as fragile. Also weird fruit like this is rarely worth it if space is limited.
Not sure if medlars are hardy in zone 3/4 but no spray is needed in my location.
I wouldn’t care for them but there is not much left in November so it’s nice to eat few off the tree. My kids are always looking forward to them and checking which one is soft enough to eat.
In my very limited experience, medlar fruit, like serviceberries, has been completely ruined by some kind of cedar rust every year, but if that’s not an issue in your area it may be a fruit that’s very easy to grow no-spray.
Hidden Springs Nursery, which I think must be in an area with plenty of red-cedars, sells medlars and says they have done well in their area (and I think they grow very low-input organically). I’ve been very happy with the other things I’ve bought from them. Some of their things haven’t been fairly small, but they seemed to be priced very fairly, and everything I got from them was healthy and grew well, and I appreciate that they’re growing organically.
How do y’all prefer to blet these? A few came off in my hand the other day, so they’re inside now, but definitely not ready. We haven’t had a hard frost either. Should I throw them in the freezer for a night to jump-start things?
Just wait, the fact that they need to go through freezing period is a myth. If I remember correctly medlar originates from Iran (and the surrounding countries) which get barely any frost or possibly no frost at all. When the time comes it will blet, usually sometimes in November in my zone 7A and there are times when i don’t get first frosts till December.
My Medlar has about a dozen fruit still hanging. Given that we are expecting snow I will likely go pick them tomorrow when I get home from work…
I remember them being ok, but even though I have the “giant” variety they are still barely ping-pong ball sized. Slightly larger than my poncirus fruit this year.
I planted 3 medlar trees this year. I plan on taking a bit of scionwood and grafting onto wild crabapples next spring. I’ve heard it might be possible to do that. Guess I’ll find out!
A friend of mine told me that he has collected fruit from the entire Corvallis USDA collection to bet and sample them all…it will be interesting to hear his rankings.
I grew four varieties they were all a little different but overall more similar than different, not sure there is much of a reason to pick one over the other besides size.
They got really bad quince rust (probably the same thing you got Eric) plus they were not that unique in flavor (like low-sugar applesauce) so I took them out some time ago.
Just making an update based on my previous comment about planning to graft medlar to wild crabapples.
I grafted some Puciu Mol medlar scions onto a couple wild crabapples last spring, as well as some wild hawthorns.
The type of hawthorns I have here are all fairly small trees with skinny trunks. They ended up getting hit really hard by the 17 year cicadas that emerged here last year, so those all failed due to the hawthorn trunks being torn apart.
The grafts on crapapple did really well, though. One of the crabapples that I grafted to was a decent size, healthy tree with a few trunks. I grafted high, around 6 ft, to keep the scions out of deer browse range (probably not that necessary in hindsight). Those grafts started to push buds faster than any of the other grafts I did last year, including apple on apple, apple on crabapple, pear, mulberry, plum.
I’ll include a couple pics from last fall to show how well they grew. The graft unions feel pretty sturdy and look pretty good after winter. They grew pretty vigorously vertical, as medlars seem to do. I will prune them down soon to try and get them to push out some lower branches. Oddly enough, the one scion in the pictures that is dead was actually a Wickson crabapple that I tried grafting to that tree as well.
Jesse, did your friend ever share their thoughts? I’ve noticed enough variation to be of the opinion that quality varies from very good to total trash depending on the variety. I’m very much not in the “all medlars taste about the same” camp.
