Ayers have been a slow to fruit pear for me in Kansas like ten another pear from the Tennesse breeding program. Harrow on the other hand will only take 2 or 3 years to produce. The Harrow breeding station pears all produce very quickly. Some Harrow pears may produce as fast as the next year after planting them.
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Have you tried bending a few branches to just above horizontal?
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Yeah, I bent the limbs. I’m not altogether sold that works. That 5-6 year is on Callery. Most of the other rootstocks were faster.
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@clarkinks I’m inspired to try my hand next Spring. Here are some of my callery trees. Do I need to do anything between now and Spring? Should I cut back to 1 main trunk now? Plan to graft to the 4” diameter trunk, or pick some scaffold limbs and graft them? Thanks
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Casey,
Yes cut them back to one main trunk or graft both and then cut out the worst of the two after they are grafted. Those will be really good pears. If you decide you want to try your hand at tbud grafting you can do that now. Here are some examples T-budding tutorial
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Slowing them down once they get started is nearly impossible. As noted above the tape really becomes hardly visible at this point. Cleft is the perfect graft for trees this size. Today is July 6th
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I’m becoming even more pro-cleft. The clefts I did are far out performing the bark grafts I did. Yours obviously are doing great.
My pears were big trees so I went with bark. After seeing yours I don’t care how big they are, I’ll drive a wedge in. Mine are doing well, but not like yours. You have branches on the branches.
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Yes cleft grafts do heal much faster in my experience. Once you have experienced it side by side you know why i did what I did. Sounds like your experience was the same. That’s only the start of it the bark graft aka rind grafts take years to heal properly. The cleft will be producing fruit frequently in 2 or 3 years depending on what scion wood is used. For really large trees bark aka rind is the right way to go. When you can cleft graft its a wiser decision in my opinion for many reasons I’ve already mentioned on pears. Some trees like mulberry do better with some types of grafts than others.
Check out their war on Callery. Take a pick of you standing next to a callery you cut down and they will give you a potted tree of your choice.
I’m buying some callery soon and they are bribing people to destroy them.
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Callery are really bad in some places because the callery is so good at surviving. They can be invasive so I’m not faulting anyone for being for or against them. In my area callery are not an invasive yet. Elm trees, mulberry and many others are 100x more aggressive. Here is really late callery I grafted.
my bark grafted mulberry scions are struggling. they arent doing anything and 1 has died. the other looks to be withering. did i just kill my mulberry or will it push new growth with no branches? i should have done what i know which is the cleft but bark grafts are also strait forward.
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In most cases your mulberry will be fine just let it grow back out. Give it plenty of water.
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waters not a problem and we are below average for temps right now. i just put a fresh 4in of mulch around it also.
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If it was an established mulberry it will come back with no problem. Even if it doesn’t this year I would bet on next.
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They take off so fast. You would not believe how much better these do using my current grafting methods than traditional grafting. I’m not doing anything new that others don’t do. It is the small differences that i do in combination that make a big difference which is why i share exactly what i do and why. As an example i used to get many failed grafts on hot years and I was confused by this. The toilet ring wax is not something we want to use later than February here it melts into the graft causing failures.
@marknmt these three trees below I wanted to thank you for again. Added the scions to BET with 100% success very late in the season. They don’t look big but they are 4 foot each soon to double.
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Morning Clark. Be interesting to see whether I got the labels right!
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I’ve been using pure beeswax for the last several years. It has the advantage of not melting in the sun.
My Hosui graft is about to hit 8 feet of new growth since grafting in April. Two others are at 6 feet and still growing strong. I’m debating tossing a bit of fertilizer around them to keep growth going through fall. If I do, I’ll have to put taller support stakes on so I can tie the new growth to it. Pear grafts can easily flop over if not supported.
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What do you use to cleave the trunk?
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These are my favorite tools for top working. Buy the knives used like that for less than 10 dollars. Im using the chefstar a chinese knife making company. Chose that one because i like their serrated steak knives a lot but have no use for the butcher knives that come with the set for food. There are many butcher knives i prefer instead for food. For pear trees it works great for grafting. A quick search shows used or new knives even now are cheap online.
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