We know the answer is yes but how and why? We can bend branches or partially girdle a tree to cause it stress to encourage it to fruit faster but are there other ways? I’ve been experimenting with callery for a number of years and certain rootstocks cause faster fruiting than others. This is good to know that with the use of an interstem we can get a pear to fruit faster. Can we use other interstems to get pears to fruit faster? Years ago I grafted quince to pears in an attempt to experiment but the experimental quince scions died after 3 years on the pears. My small yellow pear, Farmingdale, harrow delight and many other pears are good interstems. Every pear fruits when certain hormones are available. "Fruit set has traditionally been attributed to the action of three hormones, auxin, and/or gibberellin, and/or cytokinin " https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2013.00079/full Metabolic Profiling of Developing Pear Fruits Reveals Dynamic Variation in Primary and Secondary Metabolites, Including Plant Hormones
Did you ever wonder why sometimes the same pear eg. Bartlett aka Williams is parthencarpic in one location but not the other? One year and not the other? Melatonin may be linked to Parthenocarpy. " Parthenocarpy, the production of seedless fruit without fertilization, has a variety of valuable qualities, especially for self-incompatible species, such as pear. To explore whether melatonin (MT) induces parthenocarpy, we used ‘Starkrimson’ pear as a material for morphological observations. According to our results, exogenous MT promoted the expansion and division of the mesocarp cells in a manner similar to hand pollination. However, the seeds of exogenous MT-treated fruit were undeveloped and aborted later in the fruit-setting stage. To further investigate how MT induced parthenocarpy, we studied changes of related hormones in the ovaries and found that MT significantly increased the contents of the gibberellins (GAs) GA3 and GA4. Thus, paclobutrazol (PAC), a GA-biosynthesis inhibitor, was used to study the relationship between GAs and MT. In addition, spraying MT after treatment with PAC did not increase GA content nor lead to parthenocarpy. Through a transcriptome analysis, we discovered that MT can cause significant upregulation of PbGA20ox and downregulation of PbGA2ox . However, no significant difference was observed in PbGA2ox compared with the control after PAC and MT applications. Thus, MT induces parthenocarpy by promoting GA biosynthesis along with cell division and mesocarp expansion in pear.
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What If I was to say my theory is we should interstem slow to fruit pears with fast to produce pears. Many claimed Warren was delayed fruiting for them so why was that not the case for me? Perhaps it’s because half my tree is grafted to Karls favorite aka Ewart. My theory is hormones present in fruiting are then released earlier to the tree by the faster to produce pear causing the slower to produce pear to fruit. That is only a theory at this point.
Years to fruit is only a estimated number. Many say cherry trees take 3 years after buying the second year tree too flower. I am getting flowers my second year though.
I find the science fascinating but at a practical level, festooning the branches is good enough for me.
I don’t want to have to pick ( or prune) from a ladder and like the look of the old style trees so went with pulling the branches out and down early.
Production was much faster than I had hoped and that was even before I figured out about one being a lousy pollinator.
Maybe too much work for a large orchard but I’m planning on the same technique in my new garden.
( I’ll figure out a use for the all beautiful, straight waterspouts I have to coppice off. I might take up basketry or fence weaving)
You really don’t need to go on a ladder to harvest fruit. With things like spray you may have a point but in terms of harvesting there is companies like docapole that will sell 30 foot poles. The average person is over 5 feet so the average person can grow a tree over 35 feet and keep harvesting from it.
Where I work, we sell BB pear trees and pears in #5 containers. It is amazing to see that pears grown in our field on OH-Farmingdale 333 take years to fruit yet those in #5 containers fruit heavily. It has to be stress from being in such a small container. I have planted small bare-root pears and they do not fruit as heavily in youth as those stuck in those #5 containers.
Some years the #5 pears bear so heavily that the following year I find those we did not sell to be all bent over and heavily deformed. Now I have the crew pull off some of the fruit each summer to prevent this.
I guess the question is how to apply this to pears in the ground to get same results? Wound them, root prune them by cutting the roots on one side of the plant? Since stress makes them fruit heavily there must be a way to stress those in the field to get similar results.
Since they fruit so early in pots, I have to wonder if anyone is intentionally growing them permanently in pots and finding the same results? Anyone growing them in #25 containers on a patio or balcony and finding that they fruit heavily?
Buy a Bradford that is large enough to fruit. Cleft grafted scions will fruit the year following the graft. I purchased close out Bradfords (6-8 ft) at $10 a piece at the garden center and had pears two years later.
When you graft any age scion onto a mature tree, the scion takes on the reproductive age of the tree to which it is grafted.
Luther Burbank introduced 800 varieties of plants. In fruit breeding, he would raise seedlings, then graft them onto fruit bearing trees. Within 3 years of sprouting, he would have fruit that he could compare to other varieties instead of the 5-15 years it would take to grow a seed to maturity.
In case he had a tree with 500 grafts to test fruit from 500 seedlings.
If you have a early bearing pear that reaches the bearing stage, then grafting a pear that takes much longer to bear would give you fruit quickly.
I grow in large pots for now. It is not a permanent situation but I have found trees can grow quite the decent size in a pot. The ones I have uprooted have often times hard their roots hardly grow. I just changed the pot to my citrus tree and the only difference from November was a few fruit hairs sticking out. I planted my cherry trees January 2021 in 30 inch wide by 20 something inch tall pots. I can see if they need to be up potted because it has major holes on the bottom sides for drainage (I got the pots from a hydroponics store). The cherry trees have still yet to send roots that far deep nearly 1.5 years later. In my experience you will get yield but it will be reduced because it will be growing in a pot. According to Raintree nursery some trees do better in pots than others. Cherry trees can be grown in pots forever, European pears will only want to be in pots for a few years but you can do what I am doing and get a head start, paw paw a pot could be preferred the first few years actually, of course citrus can be grown in a pot. I would have to look at Raintree nursery guild on plums and peaches
Correct buy not sure if all induces early fruiting like amelanchier or how long lived other than cotton easter is 50 yr supposedly. I have on cotton easter 2 yrs not bloomed yet.
My experience exactly. Pears dont fruit faster on dwarfs necessarily because they are dwarfs. My experience is they fruit faster because of hormones. A quince makes pears fruit faster because i think these hormones are triggered because of incompatabilty. Harbin pears like many grow in zone 4 are slower to fruit sometimes. Some zone 4 pears can be seen here Golden Spice Pears - #12 by clarkinks
Here is my answer concerning making pears fruits faster
@mayhaw9999 is another avid pear grower who can offer tips as well. We have all grown pears for decades and after that many years we know every trick in the book to grow pears. People like @Fusion_power has decided he too wants to begin growing lots of pears and has started to plant hundreds of varities like we have grown. With all this combined knowledge on this website we have done most things from girdling to interstems to rootstocks etc. To get faster fruit. We will gladly help you with anything we can.
It might be a bit of a “chicken and egg” thing. But in Europe we have multiple different vigor rootstocks of quince for pears.
(in order of dwarfing, most to least dwarfing)
Quince C (and E)
Quince Adams
Quince A
Quince BA 29
for example.
And the more dwarfing rootstocks do fruit earlier.
A tree on Quince C is much more fruitful early on than a tree on BA 29 or Quince A for example.
It could be that Quince C makes fruits earlier and that fruitfulness causes the dwarfing. But I’m pretty sure if you where to grow a tree on Quince C and Quince A for 10 years. And you picked off all flowers each year. There still would be a size difference between the two.
I think the dwarfing thus has a significant effect on how fast a tree will fruit.
If you look at this source.
Pyrodwarf (P communis)
Is advertised as “high precocity and yield efficiency”
(probably compared to seedling)
I have a few Pyrodwarf rootstocks. But not enough years experience with them to give anecdotal “evidence” on if their dwarfing makes them fruit earlier.
I have some asian pears planted really close in a row between some apple tree’s (B9/M9)
The Asian pears are on seedling rootstock. But due to the crowding of the apple tree’s that are 1 year older) they already fruited in their 2e year after grafting.
They have plenty of flower buds right now. But do seem way more vigorous than the apple tree’s
That might be true but consider maybe not for the reasons people think. As an example height has nothing to do with hormones. Just because someone is 4 feet tall does not mean they matured faster than someone 7 feet 5 inches tall. They both matured by age. People mature slowly like pears. Mice on the other hand mature quickly and die sooner. Just because an ohxf333 produces pears faster does not mean the fruit is larger or tastes better either. I prefer fruit from callery. I planted korean giant on ohxf333 and it fruited in 3 years. I planted korean giant on callery which fruited in 5 years. For several years the ohxf333 fruit was small and tasted bad. The fruit is fine now. I love picking pears from short trees. Im pointing out differences not advantages or disadvateges. Both have plenty of pros and cons
i don’t think you can really usefully compare maturity of mammals and plants. Biologically their quite different.
I just wanted to point out, that precocity and vigor of the rootstock seem to be linked.
More dwarfing usually more precocious.
This is a well known effect in apple rootstocks for example. And if seen the same in pear rootstocks we use in Europe. I can’t speak for the OHxF series. But for quince and pear seedlings it seems to hold up.
For cherry rootstocks it seems more complicated. Some rootstocks with similar vigor seem to have different levels of fruitfulness or precocity. (some gisela vs krymsk rootstocks for example)
So dwarfing/vigor definitely isn’t the only variable in determining precocity. But it seems to be one of the most important ones.
For asian pears, they are dwarfed by Pyrus communis rootstock (compared to Pyrus betulifolia) and are more precocious on the more dwarfing stock.
The dwarfing and or precocity of pears grafted on quince rootstock isn’t solely from incompatibility. Since different vigor and precocity quince rootstocks also give differing dwarfing and precocity when used as a rootstock for quince tree’s where such a incompatibility does not exist.
I’m not saying we should all be exclusively using dwarfing stock. But using dwarfing stock is definitely a way to get fruits faster in a lot of cases.
I am curious though. Why is quince not used that much as a rootstock for pears in the US? Is it just the fireblight sensitivity? (and does that matter that much for the 4 inches of stem from the rootstock? And isn’t most of the fireblight risk of quince from it’s late flowering? which is a non issue on a rootstock)
In the EU it is well documented that apart from dwarfing, pear tree’s on quince fruit earlier and more. And have better fruit size and taste. They do seem to live less long. (30-60 years compared to 100 ish years for pyrus rootstocks) And can’t really handle high PH soils.
Here are a few of my thoughts:
Variety makes a huge difference. That has to be genetic and probably hormonal as Clark said. For instance, we all know that Harrow Sweet is a very precocious pear. So much so that I let my tree runt out due to too much fruit on a young tree. I’ll be a better steward of my new grafts done on established rootstocks.
I think rootstock does make a difference. Some of my trees on seedling calleryana stocks have taken a long time compared to the same variety on a few of the OHxF clones. Early in the development of this orchard, I sourced OHxF 513 from a nursery going out of business. All of the 5 trees I grafted that year began bearing in 3 or 4 years and that included a Warren. 513 does not seem to be offered at this time and I think for good reason. It rootsprouts horribly. Everything I have read about seedling rootstocks is that it takes longer to fruit but the first year at my new home I could only find Bartlett seedling pear rootstocks. Believe it or not, Magness had fruit in 3 years!
And we all also know that bringing limbs down to the horizontal will induce earlier bearing. That is hormonal for sure.
When you graft to a well-established rootstock, use long scions - 6 or 7 good buds. The two or three distal buds will make leaf growth and the more proximal buds will possibly form spurs and fruit the second year. Certainly the third. I had Tyson fruit in 3 or 4 years grafted on an established tree. This is one that is planted for your grandchildren!
Pruning - I do a lot of summer pruning for size control but am careful to leave good fruiting spurs. I’m not trying to have huge amounts of any one fruit. except the big three - Warren/Magness/Jana’s Pear triad, Comice, and Josephine de Malines. Just many different kinds to taste and compare.
I hope this helps.
BTW, Clark and others, I got some good wood or the Rous. of Stutgartt x Dr, Jules Guyot Hybrid V pear this week and can send scions for postage and cost. To update it was highlighted in the Pear Harvest 2024 Thread post #127
![Rousselet of Stuttgart x Dr. Jules Guyot Hybrid V#2RS|690x524]
In my situation, the quince is not hardy enough to survive in my location, unfortunately. I have tried many times. In addition, any area i use dwarfs must be fenced. We will continue to look for the ideal dwarfing pear rootstock that induces early fruiting in pears like shannon, aka Grand Champion, and others. I have not planted shannon because of this. In an ideal climate like @scottfsmith has it is excessively delayed in fruiting. In my area, it might not fruit in my lifetime. Pears like harrow sweet fruit in a year or 2 on any rootstock as @mayhaw9999 mentioned. Hormones are the primary factor of life and reproduction. Girdling and other methods cause a spike in hormones.
i dont remember what the grafting technique is called but what if you had a “sidecar” pot of quince thats directly grafted to your rootstock or grafted area of the tree you want to fruit faster? then when it dies its no biggie:
