Yep, that pretty much describes what I have which came from JFE.
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PM me your contact info for sending scion wood and what you want.
Greetings everybody, I sent out most of the scion wood today. To let everybody know, I got a few more requests today through FB and hope to fill most of them. Iām out of LeConte because my tree is a slow grower and did not have a lot of new growth last year. I harvested most of it for scion wood, but still. All the rest of the wood is too full of flower buds today. Iām low on Golden Boy because of most what I havenāt harvested off the tree is full of flower buds, and its showing signs of breaking dormancy anyway. Iām low on Winnie and thought I had more but she has broken dormancy with a vengeance today. So has Granny Durden, but I still have a fair amount of GD wood in the frig. I still have Baldwin and Tenns and Southern Bartlett. Itās supposed to be cold tonight I might be able to harvest some SB tomorrow if I need to. These low chill southern pears have gotten their chilling hours in and are wanting to wake up despite the fact that we are continuing to get light freezes every few days. God bless.
Marcus
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Just out of curiosity, do you have less success using scion wood from flowering or about to flower pear trees? Obviously the flowering buds would make poor scions, but the other buds should work fine. This wood may not store as well from what Iām told. Some of my low chill apples are in full bloom so I know your pain. I guess another year of poor crops on these apples.
The main issue would be shipping wood thatās not fully dormant. Itās actually not a bad thing to graft wood thatās breaking dormancy slightly. But Iām pretty far south and if someone needed to store the wood I sent them until it warmed up a bid there, they would likely have serious problems.
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My Pineapple and Orient are both breaking bud. Pineapple is slightly ahead.
My newly planted Tropic Sweet Apple is showing some signs.
My dadās Anna isā¦
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wowā¦your pears are ahead of mineā¦we had a bunch of rain yesterday so I didnāt get a chance to lookā¦maybe Iāll see some activity todayā¦
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My early bloomers are pretty far along as well. They looked pretty tight Sunday and then Tuesday, it was a very different story.
Below is Granny Durden: Granny Durden is probably a seedling and has always been the blooming companion to Winnie. Granny Durden is a really good soft pear in her own right, but she is not so different from other varieties to really stand out. Still itās a delicious versatile early ripening pear.
Winnie is very likely a seedling. Itās a big round sweet juicy crunchy pear that succulent, not hard. Itās usually the first to bloom, but it does not look ahead of Granny Durden or Southern Bartlett this year.
Below is Southern Bartlett. Usually Southern Bartlett blooms more with Goldenboy, Tennessee and LeConteā. Those pears arenāt far behind this year, but Southern Bartlett seems a little further ahead of the pack than it usually is. Maybe thatās an effect of all the chilling hours weāve gotten this year. God bless.
Marcus
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My kieffer produced a lot of blossoms this year and I thought Iād finally get some fruit from itā¦based on these pictures I donāt think itās going to happen. Last year I cut it back pretty significantly after it had what I thought might be fire blight.I donāt spray any of my trees, and the kieffer is the only one of my 4 pears that has this problem. You can see from the pics that the fruits are blackened and dying this seems to go back to base causing that part of the branch to dieā¦Iām thinking it might be time to try a different varietyā¦thoughts?
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Jeremy,
With kieffer just remove the infected part. If you want to graft it over I think it might be a good candidate to tbud over the summer. Some pears such as leconte, floridahome, Leona, tenn, Arthur Ledbetter etc are good candidates for the south. The good news is almost anything readily grafts to kieffer easily. Some pears do better in some locations in others. Kieffer does the same thing at times in Kansas if I donāt spray with copper pre- bloom. Seckle and others are reportedly FB resistant but during bloom they are all susceptible. @coolmantoole may have additional suggestions on varieties.
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We are having a cool, frequently misty so Iāve had fire blight issues with Goldenboy for the first time. Southern Bartlett always gets a little every year and shakes it off with little effort. This is her least blighty season yet. Non of them are totally immune as best as I can tell.
Resistance to disease is a constantly moving target because pathogens evolve ways to overcome resistance just as they evolve resistance to pesticides. Note, I was warned by the folks at Just Fruits and Exotics in Florida that Florida Home is not nearly as fire blight resistant as once thought and that while they still have it, they donāt recommend it. Iām guessing that the pathogen has evolved to overcome the resistance. LeCont apparently fell out of favor with growers in the early 20th Century because it began having issues with fire blight where as before it was bullet proof. So far so good with my LeConte tree.
Iām hearing lots of complaints from people about their Kieffers blighting. My guess is that since it is one of the very first resistant varieties that many strains of fire blight have developed a way to overcome that resistance. I know that there are probably several different strains of Kiffers out there. Iāve never tasted one that I particularly liked for fresh eating. In addition, they are so hard, it cramps my hands too much to try and peal a bunch. The only reason that I can see for growing them is if your area is very prone to late frost and you grow it because itās such a late bloomer. I have a friend who has an orchard full of them that goes to waste most years. However, her trees will usually make when mine get yacked by a late frost. Thatās the only time I mess with them and then its just to make pearsauce and other canned pear products. My hands cramp thinking about peeling them though. For a super fire blight resistant pear that is crunchy and processes really well, Winnie is so far my favorite, but I might be just a tad biased. There are two negatives with Winnie. One is blooms super duper early and is a prime candidate for getting yacked by a late frost. The other is that the flesh oxidizes quickly but turns back white the second it hits hot water during the canning process. It makes fabulous pearsauce. God bless.
Marcus
@coolmantoole thanks for the insightā¦my trees are still relatively young (3 years). The Kieffer has been my only pear tree to produce any amount of frui which is partly what makes this so frustrating. Iāve been keeping an eye on it after cutting away the affected areas and it doesnāt appear to have spread any further, also seeing some new growthā¦if this is going to be a yearly occurrance Iāll have to resign myself to spraying and as @clarkinks suggested possibly graft to itā¦
My Leconte did get a little bit of fruit, but nothing on the pineapple or flordahomeā¦Speaking of which, I didnāt know that Flordahome was falling out of favorā¦thatās unfortunate as itās the most recent variety I planted and seems to be doing wellā¦Not familiar with Winnie, running out of space to plant, so maybe Iāll look to get a few sticks of wood for next seasonā¦
of all my trees, the pineapple is the most vigorous but no fruit on that one eitherā¦Iāve put several grafts on it, so maybe next year. Thanks.
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Many pears really take seven years to start producing enough fruit to speak about. The two exceptions in my yard have been Southern Bartlett and Goldenboy. Both of those produced over a hundred pears their third season in the ground at my place. My Baldwin is going into itās 5th season and is the same age as my Goldenboy and has yet to make more than four pears a season. Maybe next year?!
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good to knowā¦With all the other trees I planted around the same time, when these finally do come into production weāll have more fruit than weāll know what to do withā¦hard to get my head around having over a hundred pears on a treeā¦
here are a couple of pics of my pineappleā¦strangely no blossoms this yearā¦not sure if that was a a result of the heavy pruning I did over the winterā¦I timmed the tops to try and keep the height down, but that failed miserablyā¦the limbs are too thick to really bend so Iām not sure what to do at this pointā¦maybe I should just let it do itās thingā¦
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You can try summer pruning. Generally, pears respond to summer pruning (around summer solstice) by bushing out rather than with long water sprouts. As for why it did not bloom, a question to explore is āDid you get enough chilling hours for it?ā I canāt help but notice the palm tree in the pic. Oh, I canāt help but notice that its a small tree still in a pot. Do you plan to keep it potted. You need a much bigger pot if you do. Anyway, many pears donāt do a whole lot of blooming until they are about seven years old. Some but not most do it in about three years after being plante as a four foot tall tree. God bless.
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Thanks for the pruning tipsā¦Iāll give that a try this summerā¦we were well above our usual amount of chill this winter, so I donāt think that was the problemā¦plus the other pear trees with similar requirements blossomedā¦
thatās not a pot youāre seeing. Itās garden edging that I put around the base to keep the weeds at bay. From the sound of things it just needs some more time.
More time is usually what pears need. However, the limbs do need spreading to avoid them growing into the trunk and splitting later. I find taping some broken pieces of concrete block about midway up the branch works pretty well for a young tree. You want to put just enough weight in that the limb spreads just a bit. Over a month or so it will spread more. Itās more permanent if it happens slowly, and you are less likely to break the limb. Just donāt forget about it should a tropical storm head your way. Thatās the problem with weights in pear trees. The year where most of my pear trees needed spreading was also the year that Hurricane Matthew passed by. We had four tropical storms pass through that year. That means I frantically pulled chunks of concrete off my pear trees four times that year. Still doing that will make your tree a lot stronger should you get a storm when itās big and is loaded down with a hundred pounds of pears. God bless.
Marcus
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