As many of you are aware pears are a fruit i actively promote by research. I intend for my research to not just be used for Kansas but for everyone. The USDA program was intended to preserve rare types of pears and i think as a group we use the Corvalis program for its intended purposd by only requesting the rarest pears we cannot find elsewhere. In many cases we go to each other rather than them when we can to preserve the organization. We dont always remember to donate to them but i would love to organize a fund raiser for Corvalis once a year and have @scottfsmith donate the funds raised to them , similar to what we do for the website. As we interact with each other as we grow these pears we are quickly becoming the next generation of pear experts. One distinguished difference between our group and many is our goal is not greed its to make everyone a better fruit grower in some way. My personal goal is to make crosses of apples , pears , and other fruits more adapted to growing in marginal fruit growing areas and giving those crosses away. It is also my goal to determine the best of whats out there now. I give my ideas away not just my crosses to make the world a better place for people. Everyone should grow up with fresh fruit readily available but how do we make that happen? How do we set expectations of 100s of pears available instead of 3-5 types available now. Bartlett, bosc, anjou , unamed asian pears are literally the only pears available at the store to Kansans who do not grow their own. In the future its my belief this group will have a lasting impact on the world thanks to the hard work of @scottfsmith who donates so much to our fruit growing cause. Everyone on this site contributes to that cause as well each of us doing our part while we have fun doing it. Pears are just one of my projects but they are my area of focus and have been for years. Working towards my goal of self sufficiency i naturally looked back to the past when people were living off the land. I found very little left of the previous residents of Kansas or the world but what i found at every old homesite was consistently an old pear tree that out lived the people who planted it. Realizing what i was looking at that old pear told the entire story plainly. It was clear at that time to me someone needed to do more research not just on paper but in the field. The pear was possibly the most undervalued fruit there was. In time i met several of the long term members of this site and found out we all had the same goal to grow fruit. Thats been many years ago now and that pear research we were doing back then is yielding huge results today. The group is now larger and they have the benefit of our research and many others before us.
Great idea Clark, I have learned a ton from you and others, wouldn’t be possible without this website. Thanks for all your research in Kansas pears. I’m in for $25 to USDA GRIN Corvallis and $25 to Scott for this great website. You guys just let me know how to get you this money (PayPal, check) to you.
Thank you @ctduckhunter. We need to speak with @scottfsmith and find out what he thinks of doing a fund raiser for corvallis to keep the program going for future generations. There shipping charges every year add up. Scott like myself was a former member of NAFEX and Gardenweb among others so he may have additional ideas. Im not sure where Scott is at currently for website funding but he keeps the cost down pretty good for the website.
I’m guessing that’s because he donates all the labor?
We only have to come up with a couple thousand dollars to run this site, I don’t think that kind of money would put a big dent in the Corvallis budget unfortunately. My guess would be that the pear germplasm program costs between $250K-500K a year to run, maybe more.
That said, if a similar amount of money to run this site would materially help them I would be all for a fund raiser here! They are a priceless resource.
Let me for now post this information out here that i received from Corvallis in the screenshot below. Since we usually do a fund raiser for the growingfruit website seperately lets assume for now you will handle @ctduckhunter donation question seperately. Rather than you taking on the job Scott of collecting donations for corvallis and doing one large donation to them people can go directly to Corvallis if they would like to make contributions to them at the website below http://agresearchfoundation.oregonstate.edu/friends-national-clonal-germplasm-repository which i think would be the best way to do it once i thought it over. Just finished making my donation.
If anyone would like to see the results of some of my pear research this is some of it (each link is a seperate years harvest (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)
There are many other topics on pear research on this website. We are fortunate to have programs available Very thankful for ARS GRIN programs! A plethora of pears & apples! . The use of hardy rootstocks is combined with desirable fruit using various grafting methods eg. Top working Callery Pears weather permitting . Thank you @Seedy for donating your time to Corvallis which is one of the biggest donations of them all!
I just put in a donation 
I got many great pears from them which were available nowhere else.
@ctduckhunter we will have a fundraiser here when we run out of the last round of donations. I will probably take a look this summer to see how we are doing.
Yes they are a wealth of pears varities! We are very fortunate such a place exists in our country.
Some of the pages have a Donate button right on them…makes it easy. The new curator is a real trooper; I know she’ll make the most of every dollar.
I did not graft additional pears this year do to reasons outside my control but as a reminder the work they do at Corvalis and @scottfsmith does are very important for fruit growers like ourselves. We keep seeing resources dissapear particularly for pears. Most people believe by the time they learn how to grow pears their heirs will be who enjoys them. Its simply not true you can plant harrow sweet and be eating pears in 1-3 years depending on your location. If your 8 years old or 80 years old planting pears is a great investment in the future. I recommend planting early bearing pears like that and later bearing pears together. You eat pears while you wait for the slow to produce pears. My mother now in her 80s has enjoyed all the different pears i grow. She loves them as they have made her life more enjoyable. Imagine the difference having unlimited fruit makes. I believe the healthy fruit extends her life.
Almost time to order from Corvallis again and I’ve not began to look yet at varities. Anyone know what you will order this year? Anyone else out there researching many types of pears? I know Scott and I grow a lot of unusual types with scions we received from Corvallis for research. There are no large pear orchards in Kansas but based on my research I think that will be changing.
Made another small donation this year to Corvallis to help with their program.
Friends of the National Clonal Germplasm Repository | Agricultural Research Foundation | Oregon State University
The future of fruit growing in this country and the world is very important to me. We need to get more pear varities out there where everyone can benefit from them. Since most people are not fruit growers like us they can count on one hand the pear varities they have tried. It is a big challenge to get more pears out there. Once someone has had a really good pear like my small yellow unknown pear there is no going back it opens eyes. The terrible part is I nearly grafted it over as the fruit was poor quality the first two years. When it’s right its very right! It’s difficult to grow due to core break down so Picking it at the right time is important.
@clarkinks , @scottfsmith How do you get material from them. I couldn’t even get seeds.
The 2022 budget for ARS is $1.9 Billion. I think about $40 million is budgeted for Germplasm Repository. If they don’t have the manpower to send out scion and seeds I don’t think sending small donations will matter.
My last request must have been over ten years ago so I don’t know much about the current policies.
My vague impression of what happened more recently is many people started to request many things which were readily available from other sources and it seemed like these people were just looking for free stuff. That is an abuse of what the system was set up to do; the government is not allowed to compete as a supplier. Unfortunately now it looks like they are even denying some legitimate requests. If I were to put in a new request I would mention the experiments I was doing and provide a long list of scion sources which do not have anything I requested from ARS.
They have over a dozen varieties of Aronia seeds that are not available anywhere in the US and I was turned down. Maybe it was a bad time of year to request. I’ll try again at a later date.
My misc Agriculture and pear farm is legitimate farm research so when I file my taxes I’m a business, the usda has me on their list so I complete surveys, document research. The goal is sell pears and other fruits from my orchard for profit. There are no pear orchards in my area so there is a huge need for the research. @39thparallel and I share research information back and forth and with other farms in the area. The program specifically is setup to help out in this situation. I’m sure other people’s requests were legitimate as well but maybe their acres were not enough for the program or research was not documented. Will do my best when I prune to get things out there the usda gave me for research. If I’m not up for cutting scions @39thparallel does cut scion wood here. Let me put it differently if you asked people who does pear research and might know about an obscure variety would my name be on the list of someone to ask? Many times I have asked @scottfsmith or one of the other admins for help on an obscure variety of pear. @danzeb something as simple as teaching grafting to FFA members or 4H or boy scouts or master gardening groups or something you do already might qualify you but it may have just been how the request was worded. There was a guy here who taught grafting to students who was not using the program but he was not doing follow up planting or discussing details of being an orchardist.
