What are the best rootstocks for your area? In Kansas mm111 are great for apple, mahaleb are good for cherries, callery and bet are great for pears. The best cherries in my area are carmine Jewel on their own roots or Montmorency on mahaleb. American plums are very nice rootstocks. I don’t mind large trees so please keep that in mind.
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I might have lost two Surefire tart cherry trees this year on Krymsk 5 in the Great Lakes region. I’ve read that K5 is prone to bacterial canker and you should only prune them when dormant in late winter. I didn’t prune them, but I did graft on them both this spring and last. They defoliated mid summer which is possibly normal for a sour cherry, but I scratched the bark several places and it didn’t look good. Bummer, since I bench grafted a handful of other cherries onto K5 this spring. I have a Surefire on Gisela 5 which seems fine and I think my other sour cherries are on Mazzard and doing fine. Marianna 2624 and Myro 29C seem to do well for plums in my heavier than average soil.
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I am no expert. I’m in Michigan near Ann Arbor
Most of my apples are on mm111. I like them, but it’s all I know. I selected MM111 because I thought it would tolerate a wide range of soil conditions.
I get bad burr knots, which are unsightly and worrisome but haven’t caused me any actual problems. I think it was Alan that put my mind to rest about these. Lots of root suckers too. This is no problem now that my kids are old enough to wield a pair of pruners. They are sucker cutting fools now.
The only problem is the top growth is a little too vigorous and I have to prune a lot. I might consider doing an interstem for future plantings.
The nice thing about the aggressive top growth is that I have bean able to quickly train these trees mostly above where the deer can browse on them. I have a lot of deer and no fence. I just caged the trees for maybe the first 3 years.
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In south central NE, for apples I’m mostly using antonovka, bud 118 and mm111. We go through some horrible dry periods so I’ll put up with some size as a trade off with the hopes of having long lived trees. We have a far amount of clay in certain spots too (drains ok though). All of these rootstocks have done well so far with very healthy looking trees, but the oldest trees just passed their 4th year in the ground. Pristine and baldwin on bud118 were loaded this year. Sansa on mm111 (3rd year in the ground) made a nice batch. The antonovka have been a little slower to produce although I got some keepsakes this year.
For pears, I have some ohxf87, ohxf97 and bet. The ohxf maybe seem a little less happy about my soil after a few years in certain planting spots. The bet were just in the ground this first summer but grew fairly well. Not sure of a good source for more bet, but I would like to graft more of that.
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I’ve had bad luck with M111 overwintering in pots outside. B118 bears sooner…about the same size.
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For pears, I prefer OHxF 333, 87, 97. It grows faster then Callery I would not choose Callery unless there where large trees I could top work or, I was planting in a location that may flood.
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@39thparallel
They are good rootstocks in the right location. I think callery or BET can be good as you mentioned in a spot where nothing else will work.
@snowflake
You can find good rootstocks from these nurseries
http://www.willamettenurseries.com
The BET are really good but you need to get 100 at a time http://www.willamettenurseries.com/fruit-tree-seedlings/pears/betulaefolia-pear
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Callery root/unknown dwarf interstem/Orient. This tree is getting a very strong root system and I’m keeping it about 7’ high. The bottom diameter and top are about the same.
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@Auburn
Very clever using the interstem to dwarf the rootstock. I’m guessing that rootstock interstem is an Asian pear. Bill as your aware Asian pears are best on BET if you want full sized trees or as you know you can use other rootstocks if your goal is to dwarf the tree. I’m saying that for the sake of the people reading this. You made that tree a lot easier for you to pick!
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Cool pic, Bill. Nice knife work!
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Thanks. I’ll take a look. I’m also going to try grafting a few asian pears to pyrus xerophila next spring to see if they are good for anything.
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Interesting note on Cummins pear rootstock description page stating Winter Nellis seedlings produce a more winter hardy rootstock than bet. I haven’t tried any bet, so far I have Pear on 87, 97, 333 and quince, but they were all grafted this spring. I grafted several varieties to each rootstock to see how they each respond to the different rootstocks.
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I forgot to mention I also bark grafted 24 serviceberry with Pear 2 years ago. I have only one still alive (Luscious). I lost the rest, probably 50% due to deer pressure and 50% due to low vigor and compatibility.
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Thanks for clearing up the compatibility.
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Thanks but I think time has covered up an average graft.
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Last year I grafted a couple of small limbs of the interstem so I would have wood as needed. You got me to thinking about letting these fruit to see if it is Asian. Thanks for the tip.
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Bill look at the new wood and if it has spots it’s likely an Asian pear.
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This is pretty unconventional, but I’ve been using more and more standard rootstocks. Most of them are seedling. I use my own peach seedlings to graft all my peaches, which are equivalent to other seedling rootstocks like Bailey, Halford, Lovell.
I’ve been growing and grafting my own apple seedling and pear seedling rootstocks. I’ve found standard rootstocks of pome fruits require a lot more pruning to keep them manageable, but probably no more than peach trees. On nice thing about these standard rootstocks is that they don’t sucker, or sucker very very little.
They aren’t quite a productive because they require so much pruning, but I’ve found that’s manageable too. Partial girdling of the trunk helps slow the trees, as well as using Apogee on the apple trees.
For tart cherries I prefer Mazzard to Mahaleb. I like the slightly extra vigor of mazzard and it doesn’t seem to sucker as much as Mahaleb.
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Best dwarf apples for my area based on several years of testing are G11 or G41. After just 2 years these trees are larger than many 6 year old trees on B9. Although B9 was recommended when I planted it, its no longer recommended because of its low vigor on most varieties in my climate.
G935 is presently recommended by the extension folks but some plantings from a few years ago are declining as a result of virus issues that were not understood when the recommendation was made.
MM111 works great if you want larger freestanding trees but my MM111 trees grew like crazy and got out of control after just a few years. I have never tried it, but I wonder if MM111 pruned open center may produce a tree size that is easier to pick, prune and spray. I have seen many old commercial apple orchards on what I assume are standard size trees pruned open center in order to manage the height of the trees
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