Here in Kansas this picture can say a thousand words. You can see this land is considered unusable for growing fruit. Callery has no problem living through droughts or soggy water logged clay like this. Literally water can stand here for months and yet there are my pears . All those rootstock shoots need trimmed off. That is harrow delight grafted on there. This tree is not just surviving it is happy and thriving. Look for wild callery growing in similar adverse conditions to what you have.
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I now have 3 pears grafted to Calery pear root stock. 1 Turnbull Giant, 1 Maxine Delicious. 1 Asian of un know name but very tasty for those of us that like low sugar low acid fruit. Mine have seen -6F.
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Have you seen this essay by Eliza Greenman? She’s doing some amazing work with fruit growing in general and she is a huge advocate of using more Callery: This Little Girl Wants You To Love Bradford Pears. Here’s WHY — The Fruit Explorers
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I’ll be grafting to at least 3 or 4 this spring. Including one tree a nursery gave me–the Bradford died and the rootstock put up shoots.
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I was thinking about digging up some callery, but how do you spot one without the leaves?
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Late fall, they look like this. Most deciduous trees loose their leaves before the wild bradford pear (most likely planted by bird) does.
I have lots of them around my fields… best to mark them late fall, or spring thru summer if you can ID it by leaves. I spotted several last summer and fall and marked them.
I found the details below online…
What can you tell me about the use of Bradford pear as a rootstock?
Answer: Bradford pear belongs to the “wild” species Pyrus calleryana. Bradford is simply a selection from that species, chosen for ornamental purposes. Bradford is actually budded or grafted onto seedlings of P. calleryana, which may or may not (due to the genetic variability of seedlings) closely resemble Bradford. Callery, as the nurserymen call it, is a somewhat common rootstock for pears, especially for the southern U.S. where it is well adapted to the heat and challenging soil conditions. Bradford has fallen out of favor with horticulturists in large part because of the weed-like spread of seedlings from seeds distributed by birds. But the same thing that makes those seedlings “weed trees” makes it an excellent rootstock. You almost can’t kill it!
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They are FREE.
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Callery rootstock works very well is zone 7b central Georgia. It seems immune to disease and doesn’t care if the soil is dry or waterlogged. I’ve grafted 5 different pears to it and had five takes. Lots of vegetative growth for the grafts, and they begin blooming the 2nd or 3rd year after grafting. And
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I usually look for the thorn-tipped twigs.
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I’m excited to read all this, including the article linked, as the full sized pears I just planted are all on callery. And several are in areas similar to Clark. I’ve been concerned about the wetness but feeling more confident now.
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Some of the callery get fireblight, but other than that, they are tough.
As for finding some…along the fences beside the Interstates in any city…if it’s not a honeysuckle, it is probably a callery seedling!
Ok, it could be a mimosa, tree of heaven or paulonia…
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I have a section of my property along the road that is gravelly and clay. Hard to dig.
I have some white pine trees that I planted 10 years ago. They are still alive but barely grow. I am thinking about removing them and adding some pears on Callery. Is this a good idea?
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Question… what size Pear Tree will you have if you graft something like Kieffer / Orient to Callery rootstock ?
My Bradford Pear tree… at year 20, I would estimate 30-35 ft tall.
@ribs1 - that little seedling in my pic above sprouted up in pure chert that I had hauled in for a shed foundation… and it is rooted right next to a post hole filled with concrete… but it looks to be quite happy with the location. Chert will grow stuff, grass will grow on chert… but I would say it is far from ideal for a fruit tree, but that one does not seem to mind.
In fact it is quite common to see them growing on the county road side, highway road side, which I am sure is mostly some kind of road bed, chert, gravel, etc… and they do well.
In another week or two here they will be blooming… I am in the process of taking my old bradford pear down… it got split by some serious wind and is messed up bad. Removing it. It has huge fuzzy buds on it now, about to break into bloom… wont be long.
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People forget that those pine trees need ACID SOIL.
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I have about 100 pine and spruce trees on my property. This area is the only place where they don’t grow well at all. I might try some pears on Callery.
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Thanks for that info
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Callery seem to do OK every time.
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