No, you cant put just pear on top. You have to leave 5 branches of cotoneaster to feed the roots.
But you pruned back or pruned off entirely the Cotton Easter branches in the following year(s), right?
NO I said you cant do that!
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@Bernie does this. Here’s what he had to say in another thread.
thats what I said!!
No, you cant put just pear on top. You have to leave 5 branches of cotoneaster to feed the roots.
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Interesting, do you have pictures of these trees. Now I really want to see what it’s like!
While I don’t think cotoneaster rootstock makes pears fruit faster, it sure does produce a long lived and dwarfing tree in cold climates! My average low is -37C here in central Alberta, with my coldest recorded at my backyard site -43C. Just keep 2-5 branches of cotoneaster under the pear graft to feed the cotoneaster roots, as the pear is poor at doing this. The fence in the background is 4 ft. tall, so this producing pear tree is only a max of 5 ft. tall. The variety is Marshal Zhukov, a huge and very tasty variety bred recently in Russia that takes -40C and a bit colder.
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3 year old graft blooming on cotoneaster
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