I have tried that method. I noticed the tree was struggling in a day of doing it and the tree bounced back a day after doing that. When I buried the graft my tree became extremely wilted. I noticed this and did not want to replace it so undid the digging under and it stopped being wilted so that was what caused the issue. I have found places selling standard pear rootstock but they were not cheap and not places I would normally want to go to after previous experiences. I found a Comice on Callery with Nature Hills but I found my service from them never leafed out that was dormant. This year the Comice pear I bought from them is the only pear I have left yet to leaf out. I found standard pears on edible landscaping but expensive and they charge me crazy prices for shipping. Not to mention they have you enter your credit card information on their website and every time I buy a plant from edible landscaping my credit card get unauthorized charges on it and I have to dispute them. If I could do PayPal where my information remained unknown to them or my card information was not stolen every time I ordered from them I would be more keep to buy from them even with their crazy prices. I think I saw somewhere selling some pears on OHXF standard rootstock size. I have found you can get standard sizes from Stark Bros. Stark Bros will be small unless you can get the bigger size trees though. I think they call them supreme size. They did not have as much selection a few years ago but have been adding to their selection it seems. Like they have a Ayers pear now for example. Trees Of Antiquity sells apples on M111 which may as well be standard size trees. I think M111 is something like 90% of a standard size tree.
Standard root pears that are kept small. Oldest photos I can find pits them at older than 70 years. About 10 feet tall.
Same roots, we ripped out the rest of the orchard, left this one as a shade tree. It’s about 25-30 feet tall.
Beautiful! Is that moss growing on the trunks?
The lower picture looks like a tree with trees growing out of it.
Nice looking pears trees. Great job keeping them small. I will try, try mind you, to keep my pears trees small like that. Mine are only about 4 years old. It looks like I may get some pears for the first time from two of them this year.
Due to request, I moved posts about jokes and discussion about relativity in this topic to the Lounge, under the topic “Jokes and Relativity”
This link will help expose the truth about dwarf rootstocks (watch the video). The experts do dwarf standard trees frequently by pruning.
Pear Orchard maintenance - psylla - Pear Decline ohxf87 - longevity - labor shortages - pest control - silver award pear growers - consumer focus
In pear growing regions the link will expose the use of standard bartlett seedling rootstocks pruned down to 12 feet. Many pears come into full production in 8 years if well cared for. Dwarfing rootstock can be subject to decline in 15 years eg. ohxf87. The truth is exposed by the silver award winners who live in a place that grows 2/3 of the pears in the USA. I dont think ohxf87 will die for a home owner who has 3 trees in 15 years. If you have an orchard of 15-30 trees consider some other options if psylla is present. Found it interesting they combine both strategies not really sticking to standard or espalier but somewhere in between. 12 feet tall trees are not much smaller than many of mine.
Dwarf pear OHXF rootstocks have long been controversial and perform differently in different regions. apparently. The majority of pear trees sold by my suppliers have always been on fully vigorous rootstocks. I think your title should have been more specifically addressed to pear rootstocks. It seems only quince really performs well as far as bringing about early fruiting, which is very useful for some varieties of pears. No one without trees already in production wants to wait 8 years for fruit.
Some rootstocks for other species have genuine benefits that recommend them to some growers, although I usually prefer the most vigorous roots on the stone fruit I grow and I only want full dwarf apples when the purpose is espalier.
In all my years of planting thousands of fruit trees, I’ve never planted a single dwarf pear tree. I only grow one variety that can take 8 years to bear on vigorous roots, and it’s a great tasting pear fairly resistant to fire blight- Magness.
I think how much someone is willing to wait also depends on the person. When I was 18 telling me to wait 3 years for fruit bearing seemed like a lot of time. I think it is the same on the opposite end of the spectrum where if you are older you don’t want to wait because you don’t know if you will be able to wait that long. Farmers also don’t want to wait that long. Middle aged people can wait that long though and 8 years does not sound that long when you are working as a middle aged person.
Plenty of my customers are middle aged and more impatient than I am. Lucky for me, or they wouldn’t pay my exorbitant prices for bearing age fruit trees. Most of them don’t want to have to sit out one growing season without being able to harvest fruit from their trees.
The age of Amazon only increases cultural impatience for instant gratification.
Someone did properly change the title to include rootstock as suggested. My concern with standard versus dwarf pears i think will cause people to think over their options going forward. Hopefully everyone now understands the otherside of it. Dwarf pears seem like a no brainer to almost everyone until they look deeper. The harrow sweet and harrow delight pears you recommended long ago are still 2 of my favorites pears. Harrow pears fruit quickly even on callery rootstock. They are easy to prune and keep under control if that is desired. The callery was my former rootstock of choice before they were added to the invasive list. Most nurseries have stopped using callery now. Millions of pears were sold on callery. Some of the pears i have that were sold on callery never got over 20 feet. They still consider callery standard rootstock. Ohxf rootstocks sometimes only get 10- 12 feet in my area. Standard trees likely means different things to different people. My standard seedling bartlett rootstock keeps the graft at 15 feet maximum height. BET is a different tree they are vigorous and a true standard pear. Harrow pears get hit with fireblight sometimes, but they dont die because they are quite resistant. People bring up spraying pears frequently as a reason to keep the trees short. My question is what are they spraying for? Harrow pears are resistant to fireblight, scab, trellis rust, psylla etc. You mentioned magness which i like a lot though prefer its sibling warren.
Definately agree plant a harrow sweet short term to get pears in a year or two and plant your other pears for the long term. There is no hurry for people like me who have fruit. The person who wants fruit that is something else. People can have unrealistic expectations and those people hire @alan who tries to accommodate their needs as long as they pay for the requested services for the work he provides. He grows very large pears to plant for people who can afford his services. His work is well worth the money to someone who has plenty of money and a shortage of good , healthy, delicious fruit!
I strongly disagree. The larger faster growing trees require far more work to manage their size and form. I don’t have the technology to spray the top of a 25 foot tree, or the desire to do the constant pruning to keep it artificially short. It is also way faster and less labor intensive to pick fruit without a ladder. I don’t like climbing more than 2 steps to pick or prune a tree.
Drought is not a concern for everybody. Many people have the opposite issue. Large trees can also be difficult to place in a home orchard.
Not necessarily. Root pruning goes a long way towards curtailing tree growth.
I have not seen it deployed but judging by observations on my crappy soil I’m willing to bet that deploying a deep tree root barrier would be extremely effective at controlling growth.
Which type produce less suckers, I rescued one pear from suckers, but I see my newly acquired Chorujo to have suckers, I removed them twice now for a little tree.
Like i said above watch this entire 20 minute video. These are the silver award winning pear growing experts. It will be an eye opener. They do use standards, but not in the same way i do. They talk about a couple of things as though they are trivial common knowledge that are very important.
I watched the whole video and it just reinforces my belief. They mentioned the issues that I mentioned. I don’t think that their irrigated desert orchard is very representative of your average home orchard.
FWIW, I’ve got about forty apple trees and twenty pears espaliered in a couple of Belgian fences. Almost all of the apples are on G41 and all of the pears are on OHxF 333.
Based on my experience so far, G41 provides sufficient vigor for my purposes in most cases, but some of the less vigorous varieties are pretty slow to fill out, and if I were attempting more complicated forms of espalier I would probably want more oomph.
OH x F 333 mostly seems to provide a good level of vigor for what I’m trying to do, but the trees were relatively slow to establish and tended to struggle a bit when faced with adversity (notably blister mites). Now that they’re going, though, they’re mostly doing pretty well, though only three have started to bear: Korean Giant, Honeysweet, and Harvest Queen. (KG was the most notably precocious.) Overall I think I might go with quince if I had it to do again.
My experience exactly ohxf333 are small trees here without deep roots that are intentionally dwarfing. They are 20% smaller roughly. The fruits are small and trees are small at first. They are very slow to establish. Once established they are well behaved adult dwarfs. They are not overly resistant to droughts like we have here. They are a pleasure to pick pears from.
Did you pickup on the decline issue they mentioned in their area with ohxf87 rootstock and replant after 15 years? Their trees produce in 4 years, but take 8 years to be in full production. They have 7 years of full production when they use ohxf rootstock. That does not work for me long term even if i get 30 years out of a pear rootstock. Never would i plant an orchard i had to replant in 15 years.
The reason quince isn’t recommended in the northeast is its reputation for being killed during test winters- I do not know it’s range of cold tolerance because I’ve never managed pears on quince. I have read that back in the 18th century pear growers in MA had good success with it by planting deep and thereby only exposing the scion to extreme temps. It seems like mounding soil well over the rootstock over winter would work the same way.
However, I think your mistake may have been the scions you chose more than rootstock, although the KG should have been grown on bet IMO. Unless you were going for very small espaliers. Generally you can keep KG quite small on a vigorous rootstock and if pruned with skill it works beautifully as an espalier. I manage it at two locations as espaliers.
Pear blister mites aren’t the problem here- they can be controlled with a single oil spray just before growth. Psyla is the major issue and for a time almost destroyed the commercial pear industry in NY. Bosc is especially susceptible. They are tiny and easy to miss if you don’t know what you are looking for. If by early summer new growth wilts and dies bring out the magnifying glass after looking up photos of the pest. I can sometimes be controlled with multiple apps of oil, but Centaur works with much less effort. .
Winters, fireblight, drought, deer, rabbits etc. All make quince a poor choice in my area. Have spent many thousands of dollars on experimental rootstocks through the years.
I assume that if you planted it deep it would help for both FB and extreme cold. All dwarfing rootstocks tend to be a problem when dry farming in areas prone to drought. Even in NYS commercial growers are encouraged to set up irrigation as part of the installation process for dwarf apple production.