Asian Pear and CAR

General Fruit Growing
#1

I’ve wanted an Asian pear for awhile and been doing my research (was looking at Hosui, would appreciate thoughts on size and self-pollination. We’ve got a few other ornamental pears around but I’d rather hedge my bets since I don’t own them.)

Unfortunately it seems my neighbour has a crabapple tree just across our boundary line where I had been planning on putting the tree (I don’t have a big lot so not too many other places to put it), and that tree has awful cedar apple rust. I looked around for the cedar and think it’s another neighbour down the way.

The trees would be very close, within about 30-40 feet of each other. How badly does CAR affect Asian pears? Should I give up on my Asian pear dreams?

#2

@mamuang has had cedar apple rust, and she has asian pears including ‘Hosui’. Hopefully she knows the answer to your question.

#3

Hosui is a good choice for Asian pear. It is juicy, sweet and crunchy, the way Asian pears should taste like. Fruit are medium to large if you thin well.

Rust, there are two types of rust pears can get, cedar apple rust and quince rust. You already know there is a tree affected by CAR near you. Quince rust would be possible, too.

If you want more organic approach, you need to remove the host tree. If that is not possible, you need to spray fungicide. The one I use is myclobutanil. It has many brand names. The easy one to find at Lowe’s or Home Depot is Immunox. About two spray at the right time should work well.

Protect your trees against CAR and Quince rust is easy if you are willing to spray.

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#4

Thank you!! I’m definitely not against chemicals. When do you suggest spraying? What I’ve read indicates petal fall.

Is Hosui easy to keep small? I was considering dwarfing rootstock - would like to keep it to about 8 ft or so.

#5

Usually at petal fall and 10-14 days later is fine. Mine is on OHxF 97 rootstock If not prune well, it will grow tall.

OHxF 87 is smaller but it still need pruning.

Hosui should ripen in time for you.

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#6

Pear trees in general you will need to prune to keep it down to about 8 ft no matter what root stock you use, even if you have ‘OHxF 87’ which is a semi dwarfing root stock, I would go with ‘OHxF 87’ because it will still make the pruning easier.

Last year I had ‘cedar-quince rust’ on my pear tree, not an asian pear, and it destroyed all the fruit. This year it did not happen again. The tree it’s self did not seem bothered by the rust, only the fruit. I think that both these rust diseases are very similar.