No doubt
It doesn’t matter how much fruit I get for one person. I share fruit with my neighbors, organize upick for friends, my kids sell fruit on the corner with their lemonade stand etc.
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I’m using Callery and M111. My opinion is standard root stocks just produce tougher trees. You can make them whatever size you want and they live long lives.
Dwarfing pear rootstocks are not bad, but I find dwarfing apple rootstocks to be trash.
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I did an evolution over time from dwarf to standard. The main cause was the deer, standards are high and it is easy to thumb your nose at the deer once they are big enough. But longevity is also a real issue as I have had an orchard long enough to see dwarf trees run out of gas.
That said I still like quince a lot on pears, it is much more precocious and it will get above the deer pretty easily. If I was starting a new orchard I would put in most of the pears on quince. Recently I added a new pear stand all on standard, but I will still be getting plenty of pears before those fruit so I can afford to wait.
So as someone said above, it’s all about what’s best for your own personal situation.
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quince also can’t handle high PH soils. So that might be an issue.
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Not only that but quince are not as winter hardy. I ordered a custom rogue red pear from Cummins and they put it in as quince rootstock at first. I asked them to change it due to my winter hardiness and they changed it to OHXF 87. OHXF rootstock can handle zone 4 temperatures while quince is solid zone 6 and maybe zone 5 depending on the quince rootstock. I remember reading about how their pear tree died in zone 5 overwinter due to it being too cold. You won’t have that issue on pear rootstock.
To edit here is the thread Quince rootstock - #7 by Appleseed70
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Pear dwarfs are not really all that dwarfing. I’ve got some on quince approaching 20 foot and not stopping.
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Only if you try to maintain a central leader tree and don’t do quite a bit of summer pruning. Every very old apple tree I manage is trained to some form of an open center- you simply are motivated to cut out the center to keep the crop low and light evenly distributed. The reason big trees are not as productive as smaller trees in commercial production is partially because it requires too much time and knowledge to keep them at max productivity.
I will take some pictures this year of a few of the trees I manage shortly before harvest to show you what I mean. There is no reason a big tree can’t be maintained to have good distribution of light. It’s just a cheaper process to accomplish with a dwarf tree.
Another apparent advantage of seedling rootstocks on a mature tree seems to be that it reduces the tendency to biennial bearing- at least in non-commercial production where chemical thinners are not being used.
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I can buy 24 acres here easily. My art teacher just bought some. Is that enough for an orchard. I’m not even come close to a hedge fund billionaire.
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I just did a search for an article from probably over a century ago in Cornell archives. There are photos of a Cornell professor making huge cuts in about a 50 ft apple tree to bring it down to about half that height. I searched, and not only didn’t find that article- I couldn’t find a single article by someone who seemed genuinely experienced doing major renovations of old apple trees. One method that works without creating an open center tree is to prune big old apple trees to a weep- it doesn’t matter if there aren’t apples in the center of the tree in such structure, production can be very high just by having well lit fruit on the outside of the tree with this method.
This book contains clear and illustrated instructions on this subject. You can probably find it on a free on-line library. https://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Fruit-Production-North-Hall-Beyer/dp/0969141408
It was my starting point over 30 years ago and I’ve since developed my own methods as most professionals would. However, when I’m training tall apple trees to a weep, this covers it beside the insistence of the author that it’s important to maintain a central leader… It simply isn’t. Maybe that big center cut is more dangerous in colder climates in Canada.
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California is a very different area than others. Real estate is very expenive there. Kansas land has doubled again recently. Land is really going up and i hate to see that. Pretty soon we might need to be a hedge fund to own 1 acre in many places.
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Not sure about apples, but that’s how I do all the pears. I just took a couple 30 footers down to about 15 this year.
I whack the central leader on apples after they have safely cleared deer range.
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It depends on the area in California, San Diego has some cheap areas that are zone for agriculture, but not our county. North of LA county has some cheap areas too. But the problem maybe water here.
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And likewise, standard can be kept to semi-dwarf size with moderate pruning in my neighborhood.
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I think it shows your wealth and ignorance on wealth inequality that you go ahead and say eh I could afford 23 acres no problem so why can’t anybody else. I know after working for years I would struggle to get land where I am.
I know you tried quince from your thread. Sounded like your pear on quince did not make it and suffered from chlorosis anyway. I am guessing your area is heavy clay and that is why yours are kind of naturally dwarfed.
I thought you told me land in Colorado is cheap, maybe you like to complain about inequality. The term easy is really to say I’m no hedge fund person.
For your own information,I started out with zero, no help from my parents, I paid for my own college, paid for my first house, i.e, I hustled when I was younger. Do you do any of that? So stop insulting people, and focus your energy on something else.
My art teacher is not rich but she bought the land, she’s not wealthy either. Some areas are zone for agriculture and they are not expensive relative to other area.
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In many areas of the country you can buy land for less than $1000 per acre. You don’t need to be wealthy to buy 23 acres for 20 grand
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If you go into the mountains high enough where stuff does not grow or fields sure it is cheap. I thought about buying land near my old work but something I learned is they are on limited well water there and they have too short of a growing season. I can go to Grand Junction 200 miles away and it becomes cheaper but is still fairly costly. Not as much land though. Like I said the house in the mountains would have been 300k-500k but no water for the plants and no season. Move towards Haxtun and you can get a house for around 100k but you are 2 hours from a major city for any hospital work. Move to Gran Junction and you can get a house for 300k but you only get 1/4 of an acre of land. 23 acres of land would cost you millions here either way. Even where I used to work I was talking about getting around 2 acres and no where 23 acres. 23 acres is insane.