Hello everyone, my name is Erik and I’m new to this forum, so I’ll give myself a little introduction.
I’m from Upstate NY, right on the border of zones 6a and 6b. I live in a nice suburb, and have a big, sunny, well drained backyard with one big silver maple on the north end, and a big norway maple on the south near the house.
In between along the each side of the fences, I have planted a gala apple which flowered for the first time in this its second year, and a honeycrisp (still no blossoms), hoping for them to eventually pollinate eachother.
My western neighbor has a large, healthy, very productive bradford pear that partially overhangs my fence.
My question is, if I were to plant a fruiting pear, like bosc or bartlett, adjacent to the bradford, would that tree be able to be pollinated by the ornamental pear?
My thoughts are, given the very productive nature of the bradford, with tons of golfball sized green pears dropping in my yard, that there must be another pear in the neighborhood pollinating it.
Edit: I know bradford pear will still produce sterile fruit if not pollinated, but I have had many pear seedlings sprout along my fence, so they must be fertile.
There are pears that are partially self fertile, but if the flowers overlap with the bradford that will work. Odds are you have a lot of pears in your neighborhood and one of them will work for you.
The wild ones don’t get fireblight usually in my area. Some do get fireblight and those do carry fireblight. Why not graft them over if they carry fireblight? Sometimes people dont remove them or take care of them. In my experience fireblight usually comes from neglected orchards.
There are thousands of callery pears around here. The original Bradfords are often hit by f fireblight, though it doesn’t kill the treees, and of course it could spread. Most of the seedlings are resistant or immune. These are both observations over several years, and only in my area of Georgia.