Pear on pear incompatibility does exist but its more a concern when grafted onto Quince.
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I had five different pears grafted onto quince and they were all very good.
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My Keiffer has been good for fresh eating. It is a little crunchy even when very ripe, and it does have some grit, but I wouldn’t say it’s only good for cooking or preserves. Everyone has different standards though.
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They call it a canning or preserves pear but many of us eat some fresh just like you do. By fresh eating pear people just mean something like harrow sweet that are smooth and buttery. Kieffer is a very good pear and one of the most widely grown out there. Like roma tomatoes are frequently used for other things but we call them a sauce tomato.
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That makes sense. Do you know what the qualitative difference is between kieffer and improved Kieffer?
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Kieffer tastes a little better than improved kieffer fresh. I grow both trees and they do very well here. Really prefer them on a full sized tree.
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Following up on Chaenomeles compatability. So far, no dice for me. The graft takes and grows for a few weeks, but fails within a month or two. I think the Cydonia interstem that @lordkiwi mentioned is probably required.
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Is the supposed improvement additional disease resistance?
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No not at all more disease resistant really. It is highly disease resistant by the way. It blooms very early and the blooms seem very cold tolerant. Good crop set nearly every year for me. It ripens a little bit earlier than kieffer. When i talk to my family i call them potato pears because they will feed you just like potatoes do. My mom hates them because the skin is tough and your thumbs feel like you pealed sand paper coated pears all day. Literally my thumbs turn pink. Enough with the negative things! Having way to many pears and looking at a mountain of them asking what to do with all of them is a good problem to have. It is overwhelming even when i give half of them away. The deer and racoons dont even find it fun to steal from me anymore i leave them the windfalls anyway.
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I couldn’t agree more. Having some pear trees that you can rely on is important. In my area, when you look at old farms and homesteads most of them had old kieffer pear trees because of their dependability. If nothing else, I’m sure I can pay my chickens to turn the pears into eggs, or if that doesn’t work, pay the bugs to turn the pears into more bugs which the chickens will turn into eggs.
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I have had pears growing on chaenomeles for years.
John S
PDX OR
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I’m surprised I don’t recall having heard of that before.
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I have some on hawthorn too. Sometimes called “free rootstock”. Birds give it to me, whether I want it or not.
John S
PDX OR
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I’ve done hawthorn. I had Hosui survive with Old Home interstem for maybe 20 years, but never really grew or fruited. Finally died in the last couple of years. This is at the old place with no soil and fast drainage and it was in the median strip.
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I’ve also had pears fruiting on aronia for years.
John S
PDX OR
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I have a Japanese golden russet pear graft growing on red delicious. It even bloomed this year. I thought it was an apple scion when I grafted it. Since it has done well I just left it on.
It still has the original scion tag from years ago. That’s a long lasting tag!
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Cool.
Those leaves do not look happy to me.
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They are mad at me for mistaking them for an apple.
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Reading through this thread I only see one person who grafted European onto Asian… Everything else is the other way around.
The one report of European on Asian reported stunted growth.
I have two Asian pear trees. I do have a few OHxF 87 rootstocks small at the moment, but was thinking of grafting a few European pears to the Asian pears.
Maybe someone will chime in on whether it’s worth h trying or not.
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I have a branch of devici pear grafted on Asian. This is its second season. I see no compatibility issues as of yet.
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