I have a Bradford pear and a Cleveland pear here. I grafted red Bartlett and two Asian varieties to the Bradford pear. Every time the Bartlett pears would start to leaf out the leaves were eaten by caterpillars and other insects. The Asian pears are doing much better. Next year I will do some serious grafting to that tree. It was starting to split in the middle so I ran a threaded rod through it to to save it. Part of the problem aside from bark inclusion is it was never pruned and is very heavy on the south side. So when I cut it back next year in preparation for grafting I will kill two birds with one stone.
The Cleveland pear shows signs of fireblight. I grafted a fruiting pear scion to it but it needs some serious pruning to take out the fireblight.
I was pretty shocked to read all this hatred some people have about callery/Bradford pear. Some localities even passed laws against it as if that’s the most important problem in the world.
Yes in my area they speak of non native trees like callery. The truth is very few trees if any are native. The native americans burned it all off to attract the buffalo. Elms, mulberry, etc. are imports as well and i wished they declared war on elms. In my case i purchase Bet rootstocks or ohxf.
In Europe pear wood is very valuable and from what I have read callery pear wood is even better. I just don’t see the harm they are causing because they mainly colonize areas that have been cleared of trees by people like farms, etc. They don’t do well in heavily forested areas.
Perhaps that is true in the eastern U.S. 25 years ago in California I had retail inventory of a dozen each of 8 pear cultivars. None of my suppliers used callery rootstock.
The trees that did best in Kansas are on callery. Gurneys used some callery that sprout profusely at the base. Have no idea what type it is i never saw it before. That is what they put asian pears on. The trees have done well but the shoots must be removed. I can’t complain they did not charge much then.
Earlier in this thread you said you were having problems with OHxF rootstocks…are they faring better now? We grafted onto several callery seedlings in our pasture (we have neighbors with Bradford pears), and got rid of the others.
We had a real problem with BET rootstocks being very puny when they arrived for three years in a row, and many of them dying, even with watering. The ones that DIDN’T die, are now super-vigorous. But that’s why we’ve ended up with a whole lot more OHxF rootstocks. I’m sorry to hear that long-term they don’t do well (NE Kansas). Bummer, since that’s what we mostly have.
The problem is long term with ohxf is during droughts here they dont fruit, voles and deer like them. I have over a hundred myself but it takes extra work. Every rootstock has some drawbacks.
Bummer. We’ve had no problems with deer (a fearsome farm dog takes care of that), and so far mowing in the late fall has kept the voles away (fingers crossed), but drought. …yeah… oh well.
There is nothing wrong with ohxf as long as you calculate in the problems that can come up. They are overall good rootstocks. They may not be the best for me at this location. BET like you said can be hard to establish when they are small and are very vigorous once established. Callery are an ideal rootstock which is why Kansas declared war on them. They do to well here. The knew callery keep picking up new genetics all the time. The last ones i grafted over were very easy to graft. They were nothing like the old ones that were very difficult to graft.
For dwarfing European trees on betulafolia… I’ve got an idea.
What if, you were growing a modified central leader tree, and the trunk of the tree, and maybe necessarily the first branch were Asian pear to make the tree dwarf from being precocious, and then the top were whatever European pear you wanted?
I bet that would work!
Also it could be Callery or a different extremely vigorous rootstock, dwarfing, precocious, good anchorage, sounds like a win win!
Interstems of various kinds are used on pears. Ohx333 is a dwarfing rootstock. The thing about BET most people dont know if you reduce the top drastically it becomes aggressive and begins to sucker around the base. Slowing down the top is possible in many ways but know the pear wont take it lying down.
Wait? What? We were just talking about getting some wild pears my wife’s father gathered from an island on the Satilla River. And they are invasive? These little pears are wonderful. Callery’s by the sound of it. They have grown them since the 1930’s on 3 trees. Now 2 left.
These are about the size of a stress ball and very tender and sweet, though the skin is roughly sandy russetted. Also they have been on the same spot and have not formed a thicket after many decades. Maybe they are hybrids.
