Here in 7b, Iāve got four pears: Winnie, Leconte, Golden Boy, and Ayers. Iāve had these trees since Spring 2018. Here is my report so far.
Winnie, Leconte, and Golden Boy are grafted on wild callery seedlings. I grafted them using a cheap zenport knockoff. They have all taken and grown extremely vigorously. Ayers is on unknown rootstock and hasnāt been quite as vigorous, but still very vigorous. I bought it from one of the local big box stores.
Leconte, and to a lesser extent Winnie, are suffering this spring from some leaf spot disease. So far Golden Boy and Ayers are unaffected. Iāve tentatively identified this as fabrea leaf spot. Iām spraying some Mancozeb on them today unless someone suggests a better plan.
The bloom order was Winnie, Leconte, Golden Boy, Ayers. There was some overlap between blooms, but Winnie and Leconte were finished by the time Ayers began. Winie and Leconte set no fruit. This could be because their early blooms were zapped by late freezes or it could be because they are young trees. I strongly suspect it was the late freezes because all of these trees had a second bloom in mid summer last year, and set some fruit, which of course didnāt have time to ripen before fall. This probable susceptibility to late freezes does not make me hopeful for getting fruit off of Winnie and Leconte.
Golden Boy has set some fruit, and as I mentioned above so far no leaf spot. It is looking very promising so far. I believe Ayers is also going to set fruit this year since it also had a second bloom and set fruit in the middle of last summer.
Thank you @coolmantoole for providing me scion wood. I know @auburn and several others are growing pears here in the south. I hope everyone will update this post with how their pears are doing.
