Exposing the truth about standard versus dwarf fruit tree rootstock

Hey, if I had one of those I would be shaking everything, including squirrels from birch trees :smiley:

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#8 birdshot does that just fine for alot cheaper. :wink:

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Airguns and rat traps work too. This is kind of a cool looking squirrel I suspect was getting in my attic. Took 3 out and haven’t had any issues since. There’s a full black one I have my eye on though.

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We had black squirrels at Stanford.

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My 2 cents:
I planted my orchard in 2005, nearly all semi-dwarf–M7 and later some G30. 25 trees, apples and pears. Most of the pears were full-size, all that was available at the time. Over the years I have less time to spend in the orchard as I did then, and I’m older. And it shows. It takes a lot of time, even with semis, to keep them up. The two dwarfs that I have are a pleasure to maintain. No ladders, easier pruning and spraying.

I wish I had planted all dwarf.

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From what I have read maybe the reason they are still going is because they are standard size trees though. Many publications list standard trees around 50-100 years with apples and pears and some list standard apples and pears to 25 years and dwarf to barely any years.

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I have a pear and several plums left that I assume are own root that are in the century old range. I can only surmise this as the property was originally settled over 100 years ago and the trees were old when my family purchased the farm 60 years ago.

All my trees I am currently planting are either dwarf or semi dwarf and the majority are going to be kept as small form espalier no more than 7’ high along the fence around the house. These trees will be watered regularly so dwarf and semi dwarf rootstocks make sense in this location.

I am also stooling own root euro plum rootstock for planting on another section of the property farther away from the house where water is not so readily accessible. I am also growing myrobalan seedlings for plum rootstock in this section of the property. The 100 year old Bartlett pear tree is in this area and it has never been watered in the 60 years we’ve owned the property and its done just fine without it. That is the beauty of a strong full size root system, they can handle a drought that would kill most any dwarf or semi dwarf tree.

I see the advantages of both types of rootstocks. It all depends on the application as to which makes more sense. In tight areas around a home on a small urban lot, full size trees don’t make much sense anymore. If you have the room, and/or don’t have the water access full size trees make a whole lot more sense. I use both types depending on the planting site, and each has its week and strong points. Neither is superior in my mind, they simply fullfill different needs.

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I think you are exaggerating root stock problems to begin with. Psyla is not related to root stock as far as I know. I don’t know why you think ohXf rootstocks are such a problem- the ones I have used are in no way dwarfing and are selected for FB resistance. They do tend to produce sluggish establishment which could be a huge problem for you, but once trees are plugged in they are not at all dwarf trees and certainly never encourage precocious fruiting as quince does. Psyla is a management problem that drives up production costs these days. It’s affect on the east coast industry is historic, for the most part… not that many pears are produced here now because the productivity relative to value of the crop just doesn’t encourage growing them after factoring in expense of production, including managing psyla.

The article I read didn’t suggest that less dense planting would be more profitable. The problem is the sluggish market for pears to begin with. Show me an article where it is suggested that less dwarfing rootstocks increase profitability.

You are living such a rarified fruit growing life style that I doubt these models really apply to you to begin with.

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@alan

Psylla is a big problem in the region of the video above. They have problems with pear decline from psylla with ohxf87. Have not seen that here yet and hope we never do. Psylla and pear decline as you know are associated. Rootstocks like harbin are problematic where psylla are present because of susceptibility. Ohxf333 is very dwarfing at my location, but as you mention, that could be exclusive to my location. If these things are not concerns for others, they are not relevant in their area. The people who live is states like colorado, Kansas, Texas or others with similar soil and annual rainfall may find the information valuable. As an example i had to remove a harrow delight to fireblight 2 days ago. What is more fireblight resistant? That is not an issue at most locations. Back to rootstocks the picture below are a row of full grown ohxf333 in my soil topping out at 12 feet. Beside them is a little callery with harrow delight grafted on that has been there 2 years as a rootstock 1 year as a harrow delight hitting 8 feet once before i pruned it back over the winter. The callery took half the time ohxf333 to reach the same height. These are not saying bad things about ohxf333 or ohxf87 it is saying true things that need brought up. I still grow these rootstocks but im aware of the situation. The purpose of this thread is not really relevant to your area Alan because these are not problems you experience. Lets say someone does not know this in Kansas and find out rabbits and voles target their ohxf pears but not my callery or BET. I graft several feet from the ground at least for deep snows not that we had them lately. 100 + of my roostocks are ohxf333 and i have around 50 87 & 97 rootstocks. Im aware they have good and bad points. These problems i describe are likely not even problems in all of Kansas. We have pockets like lawrence, Kansas city, manhattan, and southern Kansas that get more rainfall than 34" annually. My location is not looking like it will get that much this year. Much of my property is Clay or Clay with a foot or less of loam on top. Dry most of the time but to wet part of the time. I keep my 100 ohxf333 in a better part of the property. Some of the ohxf333 are 2 feet tall after around 5 years. There are some that are 12 feet already. Eventually the 2 foot tall rootstocks will get bigger they are established. If you planted any tree on my property this year including callery it will die there is no question. It would take constant sprinklers or drip irrigation etc. running to keep them alive. There are years to plant and years we dont. This is a year i dont plant. My neighbor about a mile from here has an orchard on ohxf rootstock. I dont know the type. They dont get pears during drought years and i do from callery. My pears on those years were half normal size. My ohxf rootstock stayed alive. My orchard is higher elevation than most farms here that get frosted bad in the spring like mine used to at my old location in my childhood. Insect and disease pressure are very high here. @39thparallel has #1 river bottom farm ground in Lawrence. In the winter there is nearly a zone of difference some years. They get more rain closer to the river. He still will have some of these problems. All that said ohxf rootstocks are great for grafting, they dont die, they tolerate disease etc… it sounds like i’m down on a rootstock i own but im not. My point is if you want to take on trellising and intensive 7 foot row dwarfing plantings on ohxf333 etc. in my region or others like it be prepared to water. Quince likely wont work here. The strategy of tight plantings is the same strategy as growing fruit in a bucket which is limit roots , dwarf the tree, then water , water , and more water and fertilizer to get high production and tasteless fruit. They intensively prune because if they dont a tree will shade the others fruit and wont ripen. That all sounds good for numbers like pounds per acre. Fruit basically is water which means for more fruit we need more water. @fruitnut grows many things but im sure west Texas is much more harsh than my location. He has to have water and he is limited by what he has. Planting a few acre orchard of ohxf333 in 7 feet rows there would not be something he would do because of water. More than that there is weather, and rodents etc. like Kansas. Our weather is not nearly as extreme. We are in one of the ideal parts of the state overall. @Olpea does not grow many pears but his experience even with nearly 10 more inches of rainfall than mine annually would be similar to my situation. Late blooming trees, rodent proofing, good pest and disease programs and good choices of scion and rootstock are imperative here. There will be very hard years even if you do everything right. The voles got inside my tree guards and killed a couple of apples here. I understand it sounds like an exaggeration when i speak of drought , disease, insects, rootstock problems, scion problems, animal problems like deer, voles , packrats, rabbits etc. But believe me when i say im not exaggerating. If you saw thousands of voles descending on your ohxf rootstocks you would realize you have limited options available. Every year the populations of rodents and deer fatten in the hay and grain fields surrounding me then in the winter those crops are bare and they head for cover which is my trees and bushes. Callery and BET are not appealing meals. It is just that simple. We have a few apple orchards and i really feel sorry for them! When the farmer cuts his grain in the fall where will the deer come to eat? Are you going to fence acres or grow taller trees the deer cant reach easily? What are you going to do about those delicious ohxf333 , 87, or 97 roots to make them unappealing to overwintering vole colonies? Frequently i get bumper crops of pears but only with strategy because luck wont work here.

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I had no idea rabbits and other animals like farmingdale rootstock. Why is that? Does that go with other rootstock than pears? We have big problems with voles, deer and rabbits around here too. I used to go to work at 3:45 AM and it was hard to not hit a rabbit on the road. Weirdly there was hundreds or thousands out then and none during the day.

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The only one I have experience with is 97, I believe.

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@elivings1

Yes when many people are around animals go nocturnal. The wood of ohxf rootstocks is not actually got any farmindale in it it is really old home x bartlett. The wood like the pears are everyones favorite. My strategy was simple callery lived in the wild without people. The animals leave them alone they are like a weed. That is not true of things most people like to eat. BET has large thorns and like callery animals dont like it. If we were in Africa knowing these things would be a matter of life and death "Living Walls" Stop Lions From Attacking Livestock in Tanzania

" Living Walls" Stop Lions From Attacking Livestock in Tanzania

Fortified bomas are proving successful in preventing both livestock and predator deaths.

modern twist on a traditional structure in Tanzania has proved successful in preventing African lion attacks on livestock and retaliatory killing of lions, according to a new report.

The Maasai people of East Africa have long lived inside bomas, family compounds made of concentric rings of acacia thorns that encircle their huts and provide protection for both humans and livestock.

But because the thorns degrade quickly in the sun, bomas are not enough to keep out animals such as lions, hyenas, and leopards, which are capable of slinking through spaces in the dried-out barrier to reach their prey. When these big cats invade the compound and kill livestock, the Maasai often turn around and kill the predators in retaliation."

The same concept is true for deer and rabbits and other animals. These are animals we should kill for food not out of necessity to preserve our fruit crop. Ignorance kills many things in life. The deer and rabbits cut a wide path around my rootstocks as the trees mature. I graft several feet higher than other people. When rabbits are hungry in the winter they prefer elm or any tree to my rootstocks. The reason we have as many problems as we do is we make them for ourselves without realizing we do it. Once your locked in battle with rodents like voles or rabbits it is to late the mistake has been made. The deer are relentless with stealing from dwarf trees. Why not setup a deer feeder it is the same thing. Then deer are killed , fences are constructed, lots of water is needed etc… It is all in how you see things i’m giving a perspective as i see it in Kansas. The animals here leave me alone usually eat a few windfalls or mulberries and everyone is happy. Had my first raid on warren pears last year by racoons they stole some out of 1 tree. We laughed about it.

This time of year the rabbits are harmless

Once snow hits the ground they are not harmless Living with the cottontail and growing fruit

They check every ohxf rootstock i have. If they didn’t have a guard on my farm they get eaten. Notice the rabbit tracks looking for food. Can’t blame them for eating. Those tracks clearly show the guard saved that tree.
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@alan

The ohxf97 are my favorites of that group of rootstocks.

I think it’s the main one ACN uses. Years ago I heard that OHXF 333 dwarfed trees but did not accelerate fruiting, and I’ve long assumed only quince is a useful rootstock for that purpose. Fortunately the Harrow Station bred it into a few varieties so you can grow them on vigorous roots and still get fruit very quickly. Sometimes Harrow Sweet can put too much energy into fruit when it still needs to get bigger.

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@alan

Harrow sweet has been an excellent pear for me. Thanks for your advice on those pears years ago! That is some of the best advice i ever got on an online fruit forum. It is naturally somewhat dwarfing and i love that! It is tall enough on standard rootstock but never gets to tall.

The growth of some pears is something we easily discount at times. It is not all about the rootstock its about the scion wood the grafter uses as well. Did an experiment with breeding apples nearly 10 years ago. Wolf river is a type of apple that breeds fairly true to type. It more than doubled all other apples growth. Apple breeders for years have had wolf river on their radar. In my case i saw a dead end because it breeds fairly true to type everytime. Everyone at this point knows about the seedling apples i grew and experimented with. It was a very fun project. Anyway scions are normally 50% of the growth habits of the tree not rootstock alone. Ohxf333 is exactly what you said but it is good for what it does if your ever interested. Ohxf333 is fantastic for me when i need a test pear crop. Fruits fast, stays small, perfect between taller pear trees. Callery are terrible if you only want 30 pear fruits to sample. Unfortunately my forelle etc. Were in the top of a callery! Wished i used ohxf333 i might not have got fireblight in the tree. Ohxf333 are terrible if you want more than 30 fruit. Both rootstocks have their place for me. Ohxf333 is a novelty to me for now, but i see why others use it.

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I can say squirrels have been my number 1 test of how to stop. Deer may bother my young trees but once they get big they don’t bother them much. I just net my young trees and deer don’t bother them anymore. It just becomes a pain to plant or do things under the netting. None of my groundcover get grazed on by deer and are too high for rabbits in pots. Squirrels seem to be able to find their way under my netting and out just fine. I have found no deterrent for squirrels. Voles destroyed our basket of gold flowers and we have found if you leave things in the back voles will destroy any plant on the ground. It is stuff someone living in the city and away from a forest area will not understand. Our back of the house is hard to use outside of pots because of pest pressure from animals and shade. It is something people will find out when we eventually sell this house. Half our land or more is not very usable.

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as a kid we would hit the trunk with a rubber mallet to get hickory nuts to drop. you don’t need a tractor

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I’m surprised. I thought OHXF 333 failed to create precocity. I might have misremembered what Jim Cummins said about the root stock when I listened to him lecture on dwarfing root stocks about 25 years ago, or he could have been mistaken.

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@alan

Your correct it failed to create precocity if used in the way most people use it. What i did was grew the ohxf333 to about 5 feet where i could cut them back about a foot or less and graft on a scion. If you want something to fruit fast they do because the growth push is on the scion portion mostly. Remember i’m test scion i know the limitations of rootstocks. Think about the airflow in the orchard, light etc… In my area the roads are gravel and lime dust plentiful on the pears closest to the road. It is a very easy experiment which so far has not been favorable towards using lots of ag lime on pear fruit trees. Purchased a green jade on ohxf333 several years ago and the graft was low. It fruited quickly but got fireblight and died to the ground. The ohxf333 came back up and i grafted it over with harrow delight. The ohxf33 tree that was green jade had fruitlets. Here is the photo it was killed to the ground the same day it got fireblight. Ohxf333 roots grafted at ground level lived and sent up shoots. Thats a great experiment and took very little space to run the test. Buckets for size in the photo.

I’m using ohxf333 now to test rows of fireblight resistant scions. Most trees have been top worked to fireblight resistant types in my orchard. BET, harbin, callery, ohxf333, ohxf87, ohxf97, seedling bartlett have all been used for the tests. I’m using mostly warren on 1 of the BET rows. Karls favorite, conference, duchess d angoulme were added to the rows for pollen tests on early and later bloom times etc…The ohxf333 is very slow growing here but once at height it’s perfect. The scions fruit quickly and i quickly know if i like the taste of the fruit, is it disease tolerant etc…Grafting at ground level is not the answer for me with ohxf333. In theory if i develop new pears they could go from seed to fruit in 3-7 years. My long term fruiting pears like farmingdale that could produce fireblight resistant varities are on a permanent planting of callery. Naturally i need only one or two farmingdale. Ts hardy is on callery, kieffer is on callery , several Duchess D’ Angoulme are on callery, ya li, leona, ayers, tenn, pineapple, blakes pride, tyson, improved kieffer, harrow delight etc. are on callery. Early on i made many mistakes putting some non resistant pears on callery. That is partially my strategy. Until everything is implemented in the orchard there is little point in discussing it further. What i have found is much of the documentation isn’t accurate. Ohxf333 produces very bad tasting , small fruit here the first time they produce. In some cases that goes on for several years. It makes me question the value of the tree at times. It is worth mentioning the trunks are a small diameter even when fruiting as shown in the photo.

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By now, everyone who has been convinced about the superiority of high density dwarf plantings of apples and pears will be impacted severely by the diseases unique to high density dwarf plantings. Monocropping is always uniquely dangerous. High density monocrops are a recipe for disease and disaster. Consider every tree touches and every root touches. It all makes dense on paper until a fireblight or a similar disease arrives. Many pears are resistant to fireblight, all of which have fireblight this year. I put breaks in the rows of pears with extra space or aronia, peaches, autumn olives which dont get fireblight. That has not been a strategy with a commercial orchard. The key to getting more fruit is to actually get more fruit!

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