Pear Rootstocks - Another large orchard in the making

My new orchard is a couple of acres of BET and callery rootstocks with a few ohxf333 and ohxf97 mixed in where others died. This is one of my largest projects yet. It’s adjacent to my aronia field. The pears are very hard to see since they have dropped leaves and the photos were taken just before the snow arrived. Be ready to see hundreds of more varities in coming years. The information is so hard to find now about pears we almost have to grow them to know anything about them. All these hundreds of rootstocks will now need pruned and grafted in the spring.



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I’m going to thoroughly enjoy watching this develop Clark !

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Your rows look like they might have been made by someone drinking some fire water. :slight_smile:

@BlueBerry

Just how the callery pears grow! Plant them they send up a root shoot 3’ away and the original plant dies to the ground. No intoxication necessary. Someone might feel it after pruning the thorns and mowing grass. All joking aside those thorns are really something. Callery thorns seem to have a poison in them and you will get cut up pruning them to graft. All that said it’s a great way to live if you don’t mind those things too much.

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I would say part of the reason pears are so unknown is most people don’t think of pears the same way they think of other fruit. With apples there has been a lot of breeding for them and there is a lot of varieties for the commercial market. It is hard to decide which apple you want to grow because there are so many varieties. Cherries everyone wants to grow them because even the store bought ones taste like candy. Peaches produce so fast they get prepared very fast. With pears it was a pretty simple choice once on which ones I wanted to grow. In my opinion the Comice and Comice hybrids are basically the ones you want in the pear world if you want a sweet pear. Only pears I have seen in the commercial market is Anjou and Bartlett which is a shame.

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@elivings1

Yes there is so many high quality pears but few ever tried them. Once someone tastes what they are missing then they want to grow it. The small yellow unknown pear I grow can be so good it’s unbelievable. Clapps favorite. Potomac, seckle and many others to numerous to name are good like comice. Harrow sweet and Harrow delight are really good if you have not tried any from the Harrow station yet. The store bought pears like anjou , bosc , and Bartlett you mentioned can be really exceptional it’s all about location and how they are grown. As you mentioned comice is a standard by which other pears are compared and so the many crosses made from it like Warren, Magness, paragon are exceptional as well.

These trees are really growing now.

Are you trying to create an orchard of all the pear varieties?

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@Robert

No not at all just having fun with my orchard im not that ambitious.

@clarkinks
I’m sorry, I can’t find the link to the website you posted awhile back with the comprehensive list of pears … I believe in France?

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@Richard

Here you are LESCRETS FRUITS ET POMOLOGIE LISTE des variétés de poires existantes .There are more than what’s on this list. The hard part is there is a lot people who dont know that is needed to be known to understand pears. As an example pears are like their own language because it is different languages not just English or French. Lets say your an American pear breeder and your education is in gene modification. Lets say they attended Kansas State. Once they graduate where do they begin and we know they will start with common known types of pears. In France education in gmo is not allowed as it’s prohited in most of Europe. They are proficient in history and language of pears. Someone might say what difference does it make and the difference is huge. The word beurre means butter so when you see a catalong like this NCGR-Corvallis: Pyrus Catalog and your from france you know the pears that taste buttery. You are interested in the list below.

Most Americans do not understand what it means to say beurre bosc so they bosc Bosc pear - Wikipedia .Already lost by the time it arrives in the grocery store this is a butter pear. Same thing when it arrives at the gmo facility bosc is used in breeding to detect certain viruses but its not known there are more butter pears. Corvallis on the other hand teaches about pears and their collection is massive so the focus on analysis. Preservation of species etc. But not so much on breeding. Let me talk history for a second Jean Baptiste Van Mons specifically was a pear breeder whos work to this day cannot be duplicated Jean-Baptiste Van Mons - Wikipedia. This is an accurate statement " He was the most prolific pear breeder known, producing no fewer than 40 superior varieties over a 60-year period,[3] including Bosc and D’Anjou pears. Van Mons readily shared his observations and plants, and developed effective ways of exporting cuttings and seedlings as far away as the United States.[4] After his death his seed collection was acquired by Alexandre Bivort.

The French and Belgians were fanatical about pears, and spent an inordinate amount of time developing new varieties of pear with a buttery taste in the 18th century. A few Belgian varieties show this by having Beurré in the name. Louis XIV doted on pears, his greatest fruit love after figs and, not surprisingly, many varieties were cultivated at Versailles by his gardener Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie.

He was a founding member of the second Société des douze. "

The last long term pear breeding in modern Canadian history was 1962 and it was harrow. “The ‘Harrow’ (Ontario, Canada) pear breeding program was initiated in 1962 to develop fire
blight resistant pear selections for the fresh and processing markets. Six cultivars have been
introduced for commercial production in Canada, some of which have been protected and
introduced in Europe. Several additional selections have been protected in Canada and will be
introduced in the near future. Two cultivars have been protected, named and introduced to
the European market. All selections and introductions have good to excellent resistance (but
not immunity) to natural fire blight infections.”
270287.pdf (1.9 MB)

There is much more i could say involving pears around the world but i have said much of it already

History of important things like the jesuit pear have all but dissapeared which was brought up here Jesuit Pear

https://www.slowfoodhuronvalley.com/arkoftaste/

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Just for fun … 3000 pear trees in 20’ x 20’ plantings would require at least 27.5 acres. :slightly_smiling_face:

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This orchard is pretty amazing now i’m top working many large trees.

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