This year I’m doing an experiment on a very stubborn wild callery pear tree and will document the results. The tree has thus far rejected 4 attempts to graft it with pears. This year I will try clara frijs pear, douglas pear, and winter banana apple to the tree as they are all notoriously easy to graft in my experience. I have a couple of other stubborn callery trees and may attempt the experiment multiple times.
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I have had two failed attempts at grafting Winter Banana to Callery. This was a very small sample to put much faith in. Please let us know how this combination works for you. Moonglow, Ayers, and Orient appear to be compatable with Callery. Bill
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Bill what pears are you growing apple on ohxf ? As a side note I found out the same rabbits that hate my callery love ohxf rootstocks. I had to paint the trunks with pruning seal to get them off of them after the last snow. Kieffer, clara frijs, douglas,duchesse d’angouleme, clapps favorite to name a few I’ve tried are all compatible with callery.
All of my apples to pear are currently grafted onto one standard pear tree. The root is a Callery that was allowed to grow high enough to limb out. Different varieties of pear limbs were attached to the Callery limbs. Then I grafted a multitude of different test apples to the different pear limbs. If it were not for good labeling of the grafts I would not have a clue as to what is attached where. By the way my other five pear trees are on Callery root/dwarf unknown inter-stems. Bill
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I have Ayers , Maxine and Sugar Sweet on callery .
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Great information Jerry thank you . I have an ayers grafted successfully as well on callery. I will try Maxine this year if I can find a place to put it. Been having problems finding rootstocks. The ayers scions mostly failed though 30% did make it and have grown on the tree 2 years. Clara frijs reached 12 feet in that time and I lopped off the top when spreading branches and pruning. Clapps favorite grew at a slower rate and reached 8 feet in 2 years on a side branch. Ayers reached 10 inches on a side branch in 2 years. Growth observations may be telling us something long term about callery as a rootstock. Douglas on another callery had similar growth and higher than that of Clara frijs.
I wanted to follow up on this old thread and give an update. Clara frijs has not fruited yet but all 3 Douglas pears I grafted over are blooming. If properly grafted and grown certain pears produce fruit fairly quick. Duchess and Douglas are some of the fastest pears to come into production.
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If I remember correctly Douglas is reported to be quite precocious is that right? Let us know how that one tastes if some come through. I have heard various second hand things about how it tastes but I don’t remember hearing from anyone who has actually grown it before.
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The Douglas pears I ate years ago were good but the skin was tough. Years ago I bought them from Wal-Mart and The skins were bright yellow and the flesh was good… I’m not sure they were what they were labeled. Once I grow my own I will know a lot more about them. The trees are very susceptible to rust but seem highly resistant to fireblight. Rust is the only problem I’ve seen so far.
Yes that is correct at least in my area. The Douglas pear since it was created a short distance from me in Douglas county Kansas may do better here than in other places.
I’ll will follow this for sure. I’m always interested in better pears for the south! I’m afraid that we aren’t going to have much luck here in Dallas again. We just haven’t had any chill at all the last few years and it’s really taking it’s toll. I only have a few varieties that are blooming and so far they are blooming pretty sparingly.
Drew
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Douglas pears are covered in fruit buds this year! I was very wrong with my plans of using Clara frijs to top work with because it does not produce pears quickly at all. Like claps favorite and others Clara frijs is very slow to produce fruit!
Perhaps You can graft Clara frijs to the Pyro-233 We would all like to know if its as precocious as the claim.
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Yes I will likely grow them out a year and graft them next year. Great idea!
I wanted to see if anyone had success with intersteming some rootstocks together like OHxF 87/97 with BET or Calleryana? I have some extra OHxF 97 and one BET and was wondering if this would be a good idea?
I was also wondering if whip tongue is the method for joining the rootstocks together? Or do a cleft graft? I’ve been getting into grafting recently and hoping for some takes for my first time grafting some Asian pear varieties.
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Have done farmingdale rootstock on callery but not others. Its 100% compatible. @Lucky_P uses an older Ohx rootstock as an interstem frequently so i do know the line is compatible.
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I used OHxF 513…Cummins said 513 was compatible with all Euro & Asians, with no concern about Asian Pear Decline.
I assembled fruiting scions onto 10" pieces of 513 with W&T, then grafted that directly onto callery understock, again with W&T. Did 20-30 that way, with 100% takes
513 is supposed to yield a tree 65-75% of standard, IIRC, but I cant tell that, as an interstem, it diminished size in the least.
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Was looking through a few threads about interstem between pear and apple.
I have two Asian pear trees, one very small and the other a bit bigger. They are now both multi-grafted with Asian pear varieties.
I would be interested in trying to add a few apples to them if it’s possible, so I was thinking of the winter banana as had been suggested as a possibility here. Scion is available for winter banana in several places.
I didn’t find anyone here who actually used winter banana to go from Asian pear rootstock to apple.
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