There is lots of discussion about seedling apples on this forum but not much on seedling pears. Does anyone grow pears from seed either for rootstock or for fruit or are they more difficult than apples ?
Derby,
I have a Cleveland Flowering pear that drops seeds under the tree and sprout many seedlings each year. I use them for grafting Euro and Asian pears. They are very cold hardy root stocks and the grafted trees were fairly short when reach maturity.
Tony
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I believe that for a long time seedling rootstock was pretty much standard for pears until the OHxF rootstocks were developed. Some quince is also used.
I wonder how seedling pear rootstock compares to the OHxF series.
I planted several seeds from pears I ate last winter , only two came up and one looked pretty sickly all summer. I plan to move them to a spot with more light next spring
Well, they’re more vulnerable to fireblight as a rule, and in fact the OHxF series were specifically developed in response to the great fireblight outbreak that ruined so many pear orchards. I don’t seem to be able to copy and paste right now, but if you’ll google pear fire blight Corvallis Old Home Farmingdale you’ll find a good article on the subject.
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There are plenty of Fireblight free strains of wild callery pears growing. They are great rootstocks. Some states have a real problem with them. I was shocked and overwhelmed by the high numbers of them when I drove through Oklahoma. The wild pears number in the hundreds there and not a drop of disease on them.
I have some ohfx333 ordered this year and will let you know how they grow. The wild callery here get 15-20’ and grow vigorously. When I say a specific height keep in mind they are all genetically unique so I can’t say what they will do for sure.