Harrow pears will bear in 1-3 years for you i would put out some of those as well. Then you have pears to eat while you wait. Those two pears you planted will produce an excessive amount of pears! They are 2 of my favorites because they are a dependable crop. The blooms are very resistant against early freezes. Improved Kieffer pear - #34 by clarkinks. They frequently get frost rings on the pears from the cold weather.
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@clarkinks … lovely…
I was sort of planning to graft onto these two kieffer trees once they get some size to them.
Possibly harrow sweet and korean giant… per orange pippin those pollinate.
Also may add some orient… which pollinates with kieffer.
I need to stick with FB resistent varieties for sure.
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Harrow sweet is disease resistant and early to produce. In my experience it does not overlap KG in Kansas. Blakes Pride blooms very late like harrow sweet. @mamuang what is your experience where you live ? Kansas has very odd seasons they dont align to many locations.
I get some consistent overlap between KG and Harrow Sweet in Pennsylvania. I only have 3 pear trees in my yard and you named 2 of them. I have never had any pollination issues.
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@ZombieFruit … orange pippin says they are both (KG and HS) In flowering group 3.
But i an not sure if they are in the USA.
I will try to find a Tennessee or bordering State nursery with a pear pollination chart and see what they say before i decide on KG.
I am not dead set on KG… but lots of folks hear seem to like them and have heard they resist FB too.
That is the main thing i need… FB resistence… and would be nice if it ripened earlier or later than kieffer… or was significantly different than kieffer… taste, texture, etc… just to have something different.
Thanks
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Here in central MA, KG and Harrow Sweet bloom time overlaps about a week. KG is one of the earlier bloomers, HS is middle bloomer.
A few varieties are late bloomers. But the middle bloomers usually overlaps with the late ones.
The trouble may occur if I had only a very early and the very late varieties…
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Asian pears and hybrids are early bloomers here. Blakes pride, orcas, my small yellow pear some of the last. Harrow sweet is still blooming here. It has a crop of pears on it. Some years it overlaps KG if its late and HS is early. My small yellow pear is still blooming. Clark's Small Yellow Pear - #139 by clarkinks
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These grafts are sizing up pretty good considering we have not had much rain. The wind was relentless this year.
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It was several weeks ago or longer. The grafts are slow this year that is one of the largest. Some were done over a month ago and barely leafing out. That is why i use parafilm.
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Good news and bad news.
- Tree 1 was about to lift off but got chomped by deer. It left 1 bud so not all is lost. I didn’t expect deer to jump into brambles just to eat 5 pear leaves…sigh.
- Tree 2 is continuing to grow many leaves, it’s about to take off.
- Tree 3 is showing growth now from the only bud left.
So I think all pear grafts on callery this year took. I keep finding more callery seedings, at least 6. I might try to move them to more suitable place in fall and then graft them in spring.
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Glad to read of your success. This is very good news. The deer will likely be back be ready for him. Maybe you can throw together a fence around the tree to protect it from that deer.
Here’s my Hosui grafted on a sucker growing on a flowering pear tree. The big tree above gets tons of fireblight so I’m not too optimistic about long term prospects.
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Been top working BET rootstock lately that was grown in very poor soil in my orchard. This area is 2 rows of pears from the border of my property line. The cedars are left there as privacy for the neighbors and myself. The soil in this area is mostly clay. Beautifolia are very nice rootstocks but they are just a little more vigourous than i like. When i put them in Clay it really dwarfs them. In heavy clay they are the right rootstock for me. Im grafting warren and Karl’s favorite to them which grow to about 15 feet in the same type of soil on callery. I’m guessing these will reach 22- 30 feet. There is water there much of the time which will make them grow even in heavy clay. On a wet year there would be water standing right beside them in that little terrace. Imagine hundreds of these delicious pears to eat! The trees are resistant to fireblight.
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I got a swampy area too, thinking about transplanting a callery there to see how it does. The existing unknown pear and rootstock in the swampy area is sickly looking.
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Looks like they’re all ready to explode with growth. What do you estimate the take rate this year to be?
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100% take rate up to now. Harrow delight has some old home rootstock in it’s genetics. It is (Old Home x ‘Early Sweet’) x ‘Bartlett’. Naturally the take rate is higher. The cleft graft will always have a higher take rate because its twice as much surface exposed as a whip graft or bark. Different pears may or may not have a good take rate. Have had 100% of pears fail before depending on the type and what i was grafting to. Considering what i am grafting to these are very good numbers.
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