Thank for the compliments. I think you are right about the compatibility issue! I think it is better to graft to trees that are all ready in their location. When I dug up the rootstocks, I had to cut the tap root. I was really hard digging them up. I would not think small trees, the size of one your finger would have some many roots.
Next door, I grafted on the trees and didn’t have to dig them up. I grafted about 8 trees that where about 1/2 in diameter. Some pictures below. I hope the deer don’t eat them.
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This encourages me to grow out my thorny Asian pear seedling, I think it’s a cross between our Korean Giant/Olympic tree and our neighbors’ Giant Bradford pear about 300 yards away, I don’t thing anything else flowered early enough to pollinate our Asian pear and it’s always been bearing well since it matured and probably even before. In any case these Asians pear seedlings will be interesting to see how they turn out, and you must be right, they will be great trees, at least in the right places.
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If you end up growing them out, please keep us updated. I bought a Korean Giant to cross with Callery after finding some large-fruited Callery hybrids while camping last year. The cross seems like it could be a great starting point for a breeding project.
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I think if I were planning this, I’d like to do Callery x Keiffer and then cross that with Hosui, all of them should be zone 4 hardy and then you’d get a mostly Asian and the first two are highly fireblight resistant and the final Hosui cross could easily be selected out while young by intentionally inoculating them with fireblight.
And yes, I will let them grow, one is about 6 feet tall and I think only 3½ years old although there’s a chance it’s 4½ years old.
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This past April, I grafted Warren scion to a callery pear volunteer and the scion grew 10 feet in 5 months!
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I have 3 pear trees grafted to callery.
Kiefer, Improved Kiefer, Orient
It has to be fireblight resistent to have a chance here.
On my Improved Kiefer tree I have 2 grafts each of Bell and Potomac.
On my Kiefer tree.. I have 2 grafts each of Warren and Karls Favorite.
My Kiefer trees bloomed and set fruit this spring.. but a mid March frost took the little fruitless.
Maby next year.
TNHunter
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Hope did your trees do, did they make it? And did you eventually prune the Callery branches down low, or did the deer do that for you?
I found one too.
About the same size, up to 1¼” ~4cm, @clarkinks would probably be excited to see them.
I collected a bunch and put them in large pots with forest top soil and will leave them out to grow rootstock for me.
If anyone wants seeds or cuttings I can get some for you, maybe someone knows how to contact Clark, judging from his previous reaction, he might want cuttings.
I could imagine that this x Korean Giant could be amazing.
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The one trait I would love to see in an edible fruit pear is horizontal branches. I’ve seen it in some wild callery trees on the side of I-22 northwest of Birmingham AL. They are very visible when blooming in the spring.
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I would say this does, apart from all the various angled trunks, and so does Olympic Korean Giant on betulafolia, or at least ours, aside from starting above the browse line, it’s shaped like a Christmas tree and pretty much all by itself.
I should take a picture of horizontal branched pear tree. From your description, you have never seen one. They look very different from normal pear trees.
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