I always give a new tree at least a year to start growing to give new branching and height. The main thing is to make sure it is at least growing by June or July, greening out. I bought an apple tree I have been trying to find on a particular rootstock. I found one to buy. Once it came it looked so puny, like a twig. It is greening out but I believe it will take more years to play catch up to the sizes of the other apple trees from the other nurseries I bought trees from this year. I will not be buying any more fruit trees from that nursery ( Cummins) again. Same pricing as the other nurseries but a lot inferior tree trunk dimension size. Again, I will see what it looks like next year. I may be surprised at how much it grows, I doubt it though. I’ve had fruit trees for many, many, many years. So you usually know how nursery stock will grow.
A friend and his wife were buying $300 fruit trees. That year i purchased them a couple of reliance peaches from Gurneys for $20 each. The reliance peaches outgrew the $300 apples and produced peaches. We both know peaches produce faster than apples or pears ofcourse but they sure were surprised. The point is those trees were a switch when they showed up.
Good to know. This apple tree from Cummins is a switch at best. I will have my fingers crossed. A $300 fruit tree, wow!!
I remember when we named the pear for Jerry, and I want to have it mainly to remember him. I don’t recall actually tasting it.
Thanks for your offer. I convinced myself I want Golden Russet Bosc specifically. I think it is because of some other characteristic I read beyond just the russeting.
The russeted comice has been, surprisingly, easier to grow so far. I now have it on Quince, aronia, and OHF 333.
Have you had any OHF333 sized pears trees before?
I don’t know what rootstocks my fruiting pears are on. I have some young trees on 333. I don’t know from experience what size that makes.
Ohxf333 here make small trees for sure in clay soil about 12’ - 15’ max. Depending on the scion that is on them depends on how big they get.
A 300 dollar tree can happen if bought locally here. Many nurseries here will sell trees between 120-250 dollars if it is a fruit tree. My mother had to sign up for a project for her school this year. She signed up for the tree project thinking all she would have to do was plant a small tree in the ground. She figured out after accepting it that everyone had their own requests for the trees and she would have to convince the school committee to approve her to spend almost 700 dollars on 2 trees because they had to be 2 inch caliper trees. If you are looking at massive trees people will sell them to you for a price.
A friend made a small killing selling $500 - $700 oak trees he had grown up in a row. The wealthy were building new homes on the golf course. They wanted a nice big tree for the yard. The guy used a tree puller he worked with.
I think Alan’s business model is selling massive trees to the rich. I have mixed opinions on it personally. That is my gripe with Stark Bros. They are selling small trees for a lot. Their surpreme size is what a regular tree costs. I just like them for the fact they sell standard size trees. It is hard to find a standard size apple or pear tree and Stark Bros delivers on that. There is niche markets like standard size trees and big trees people will pay big money for.
12 feet is great for me. I just like to get to 8 or 9 feet quickly so I can remove the deer cage and still get fruit.
I can see a B&B larger caliper tree being expensive as that, but a fruit tree? I would have to think long and hard about spending that much on a fruit tree.
I had some shade trees planted some years back from a local nursery. They were expensive as the $300 range but they were larger caliper trees and B&B plus they also planted them for me. So it was worth it.
Ohxf333 is not very fast growing in my opinion. Keep in mind many of my trees are not dwarf. When it gets taller it quits pushing much growth.
I think my Seckel is on what one of those big nurseries like gurney’s calls dwarf. I shared a picture of it earlier and its on its 2nd or 3rd season with the deer cage off.
I think I learned at one point what rootstock they are supposed to use.
Also, I’ll probably take the cage off of the Bell de Guigno and Thornley after this season. I could probably do it now but might lose a few of the fruit that are lower down if I did that.
My OHXF 87 trees pushed out a lot of growth first year compared to my standard trees. My only OHxF 87 trees left out of the 3 I got are Warren and Magness. Though I suppose both of my Comice did not make it standard or not. The Warren and Magness while putting a lot of 1st year growth have been pretty stagnate on growth even in their second season while my standard size trees want to push a lot of growth in their second season. Granted we are at the start of the second season so we will see who wins the race.