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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
