"Starting an orchard from wild callery pears"

I will get my good varieties of pear scions from 39th parallel, and I will put my seeding scions on some of the trees, their is plenty of trees to graft to, so why not take the chance of grafting some seedling scions to some branches. No risk, no reward. It is not costing me no money, or any space, so why not?

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I understand now.

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True that some take that long and many are inferior in quality. But, one of the seedlings might bear in 3 years and be the next “Bartlett”…you never know.
Some
folks are adventurous, others not so much.

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I use Callery for all my pear rootstock. If I were doing a large planting I would still go with Callery. If you want quick to fruit pears graft in Harow Sweet. There are probably more varieties that fruit quick but I don’t have any experience with them.

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I cut a callery seedling for my neighbor having a caliper over 3" last year…grafted on 5 varieties.
Four varieties have pears, including Ayers. And this year I added Maxine and Pineapple.

All grafts 5 to 8 feet off ground, amazing to see 5 + feet of growth in one season!

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It can be done take a look at these two threads

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Nice pictures!

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Today I decided to dig up some wild callery pear trees(for rootstock) I will graft them next spring and make some new pear trees. As I was digging I came across a wild pear, with some fruit on it. This is the first wild pear I have found with fruit on it that was bigger than a quarter. The pears look like miniature Asain pears. I thought, I would take some pictures and share.

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I have a calary pear that produce halfar size fruit. It is quite taste with a lot of seeds and a verh bitter skin

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Probably a Bradford seedling. Or cross.

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@reno

Yes that’s a genetic mutation I’m familiar with them. You might like this thread below.
Observe the size of the wild callery fruit. I really wish I had another lifetime I would get scions of all these large fruit callery seedlings and cross them to improve the variety. Callery will do it on it’s own eventually. Thanks for posting this! The next step in pear rootstocks is clearly callery or gmo
large callery
Want to really make some people think with this thread! Do any of you think callery fruit getting larger is any different from how apples started out? Callery are not as far along as apples. The genetics are going to make larger pears preferred by deer which will eat the larger fruit over non large fruit. Those seeds will be spread everywhere.

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NO! The calary pear has gone backwards.

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Thanks for the nice picture and information. I was thinking of going back and collecting some of the fruit. I will get some of the seeds out of the fruit, and try to grow my own rootstock. (just for fun) I would be a lot easier than all that digging. This tree was very close to the road, it has nice color, and I did not see any thorns on it. Another thing I noticed, It must be resistant to salt and brime from the road? Most trees can’t survive next to the road from the salt they apply to the roads. The snow plows throw that snow and salt a good distance. I have noticed people who plant pine trees close to the road, they always seem to die after the snow melts in the spring.

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I have found one Callery pear with larger fruit than average. I thought this was a persimmon when I drove by because of how the fruit load is bending the branches.

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Nice Pictures!

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Crab-pears night make good cider

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I found one along the side of the road with larger fruit like that. I assume it’s from callery crossed with a larger pear. I tasted one and it was surprisingly good with a sweet, juicy fruit gum flavor…for a couple of seconds, but that good flavor was suddenly replaced with an intense mouth puckering astringency like an unripe persimmon. It may be interesting if added to a batch of cider, but definitely not for fresh eating.

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This is an interesting thread if anyone wants to send me some sticks of large fruited callery scion wood I have rows of rootstocks I could use to graft. Later those trees could be used to make some crosses. Would really like to preserve these as I think they are valuable for breeding. Would like it better if the usda Corvallis or another entity was interested in these. Honestly I have endless space to grow them in.

@Preston

That’s incredibly productive after 2 or 3 crosses over 10 -15 years that tree could have some very special grandchildren.

@kiwinut

That’s what I wondered about could it be the cross of callery and large fruited pears?

@poncirusguy

Imagine if you could eliminate 90% of pear diseases and have a great Perry pear !

@reno

Yes we need to collect scion wood off that tree and grow it for future breeding I think.

@BlueBerry

Wish we knew what it was actually a cross of so we could duplicate it.

@Auburn

Callery are exceptional rootstocks in my opinion. They work particularly well where nothing else will grow. Imagine someone wants an orchard but but farmed out old ground will barely even grow grass and yet callery rootstocks grow like a weed.

This sounds like a good pear growing project. Please let me know if your in and want to send me some wood this winter. You already know from past threads if you want to try something unique in fruit growing I’m the right person Che, mulberry, osage orange, fig grafting . I’ve made some good crosses and some of my unique fruits are out there New Apple Seedling Varieties

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@39thparallel

The genetics on these wild pears is valuable for future crosses. My suspicion is that clustering callery pear crossed with the others will produce a valuable cross within 2 -3 generations. I suspect the seeds will produce large fruited seedlings and standard callery if they are not sterile. One of these large fruited callery contains the genetics of a valuable tree. It would be as important as Asian or European pears possibly. They could possibly grow in marginal areas like western Kansas, Texas and Colorado not known for pear growing. Like the clarks crabapple they have potential but further breeding is needed. The seedlings of the clarks crabapple might be even better than the seedling is now. Think of apples and pears that grow like grapes. Those valuable seedling genetics have been bred out of many fruits. Everything hated about the wild callery are what makes them so valuable. Imagine if people in the areas with very poor soil could grow pears and apples. Think of them as being prolific like what a cherry tomato is to tomatoes. The problem has always been people’s greed that impeeds progress. They want to get paid for new crosses with patents and they are obscure with their research. Money has certainly motivated people as well. People like me don’t care about the money I want to see the world become a better place than we found it. Imagine how many people a pear like that could feed. A pear like that could make many people’s lives much better.

@Preston

I realize those clustering pears are inedible but I think I know what to cross them with to change that.

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@clarkinks that tree is a bit of a drive for me to get to it. If it was closer I’d say I can get those scions no problem but where this tree is growing is a place I dont go to often. I really didnt want to make any promises on it yet but I do intend to get some scion if I’m out that way this winter.

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