A friend believes if we topwork enough eating pears on wild callery out in fields, hedgerows, forest edges that eventually the eating pears would cross with wild callery creating hybrids with fruit too large for birds to eat and distribute far and wide. Mammals could still distribute though. Might just be a drop in the bucket.
3 Likes
Hybrids are already everywhere. Short answer is that the traits of Callery are overwhelmingly dominant. This means that there will be occasional callery cross trees but they will never catch up with the number of pure callery trees.
4 Likes
Slightly tangential, but an interesting read:
2 Likes
I have found pears topworked to wild callery pears to be strong, surprisingly precocious and sturdy, with extremely fast growth due to the huge undisturbed root system. I first did this 5 years ago and the trees are in bloom now. They bloomed even 1 or 2 years ago but the late freezes got em’. This year we look to be in the clear so far. They are all at least 11-12 feet tall now from a cleft graft about waist high 5 years ago. I just cut off the tops, split the trunk in the middle with an old fashioned cleft graft tool and inserted 2 scions on each side, waxed it, and thinned to the best one.
4 Likes
Blake- Same experience here with precocity, vigor. Have you seen a lot of root or trunk suckers on the topworked callery?
We need to spread this information around. My friends, even gardeners and fruit growers are always stunned to learn of this conversion. We need more grafters- a lot more grafters.
2023 I hope to train a bunch of local master gardeners to graft using callery conversion as bait: gourmet eating pears from wild monsters. Makes sense to them, unlike my more esoteric reasons to learn to graft that haven’t resonated with friends over four decades.
All you grafters out there: I think this is our best opportunity in a long time to recruit new grafters.
3 Likes
I have noticed zero suckers around my grafted calleries. But, I also mow around them. But no trunk suckers. They are gold as far as rootstock and grafting opportunities go. Here in KY we have whole fields of them. You could just bulldoze or mow them down into organized rows and graft them all and have an instant pear orchard. Pretty neat idea. I have also noticed they take to Asian pears and European pears equally as well. I have Art’s Bosc, Shinko, and Burford in full bloom now on them. I should get some photos up.
5 Likes
Been using callery for many years as rootstocks and it has not always made me popular because people hate callery. It’s an invasive in many places so I can’t blame people for how they feel. It’s easier to work with nature than against it which in my area only BET and callery rootstocks fit all my needs. Ohxf are very good rootstocks and I have lots of them. Callery adapt easier to soil, weather, disease, animal browsing extremes than other rootstocks.
3 Likes
I’ve been putting off learning to graft but it’s on my priority list now. I’d come out to Easton for a lesson!
1 Like
Happy to teach.
1 Like
I’ve cleft grafted Harrow Sweet, Warren, Golden Boy, Leconte, and one other unremembered pear on random callery seedlings. Strong graft unions, extensive growth, quick to bear (though Warren and Harrow Sweet are only one year old so can’t say that yet), drought resistant. All have suckered from right at the base of the tree for several years. Considering the positive attributes, and the price, a small negative.
1 Like
These seedlings i grow don’t do that but we know they are all genetically unique so it shouldn’t surprise us that a callery does that. Harrow sweet will have pears by next year but warren takes 5 years total or more.
1 Like
Who has found a way to make Warren blossom? Five years ago I grafted Improved Kiefer and Warren into a Potomac tree and pulled branches horizontal. Just four or five blossoms each year while the Potomac and Kieffer are loaded. Magness also a shy bearer but not as bad as Warren. Suppose I could try ringing or notching. Nearby I have Blakes Pride, Vavilov, Harrow Sweet.
2 Likes
Warren is not a production pear. It’s quality not quantity so think in terms of 5 pears per branch being a really good haul! There is never any thinning required. Every year I get about 50 - 100 Warren pears total on half a tree. The other half the tree is Karls favorite aka ewart which is a heavy producer. That kind of production is about as good as it gets unfortunately. 100 pears from half a Warren tree 15 feet tall on callery is incredible production. It’s sibling Magness is a slightly heavier producer in my opinion. Magness and Warren’s only redeeming qualities are the taste and disease resistance. Magness is more fireblight prone than warren.
Potomac produces at least 4 - 5 x as good. Kieffer is an ultra heavy producer 10x or 20x better than warren. So every warren you get you should get 5 Potomac at least and 20 Kieffer in the same amount of space. Kieffer is a much heavier producer than Potomac.
1 Like
Clark- I’m getting the same production as you from those varieties. Less work thinning!
1 Like
It’s just the way those trees are and many people don’t know it. They ask why I grow Kieffer and I tell them it’s like the russet potato of pears it will feed you.
1 Like
Here is a pic of a callery grafted with an asian variety 3 weeks ago.
And since everybody needs a place to sleep, look where this guy is hiding out.
7 Likes
The wild callery are showing up pretty good here now. Most everything else has dropped leaves… but many callery still have some nice reddish leaves.
I am going to transplant some of these to graft to next spring.
3 Likes
Pear rootstocks:
those “benificial” genes will always be damaging to health. GMO’s are the biggest threat to nature and humanity, Italy and Russia have it right GMO’s are illegal., and it shows, there are no human freak shows like “the people of walmart” over there.
Unfortunately there are already GMO apple rootstocks. When will the horrors end?
Pacific Crabapple is a very good wetland apple rootstock by the way, callery for pears, and antonovka and betulifolia for drought-there was research on that on stolen Palestinian land.
1 Like