This was my working short list for non-purely Asian pears.
FB resistance a must to even begin. <500 hr chill ideally.
Pollinator compatible or self.
Not too similar fruit.
Staggered harvest between varieties would be nice.
Maybe a fresh eating, a canning, and a long keeper.
Scion availability
If wishes were fishes…
Warren
Ayers
Potomac
Spalding 150
Flordahome (3-400)
Hood (1-200)
Keiffer (2-300)
Monterrey (300)
Pineapple (200)
Southern Bartlett (400)
When I see bark cracks like those, I usually suspect cicadas have been laying eggs.
Thanks a lot Clark! Hoping you feel better soon:)
I have them on moonglow and shinsui. Thanks!
My Carmine jewels require spraying with fungicide and Spinosad for insects or I only get moldy, wormy fruit.
Hopefully this is a reasonable thread for this question. Does anyone reading this know where to find Magness / Warren pears in western Canada? All the testimonials for them on this board has me pretty interested to get a couple.
I’m not aware of a western Canada source for those varieties, but Wiffletree Farm in Ontario has Magness; and they will ship to BC. I’ve bought several items from them and have been pleased with their quality and price. The only drawback is shipping date: the earliest seems to be mid-May.
Thanks! They had popped up in my Google search but I assumed Ontario was too far away.
They only sell Magness on dwarf rootstock which sucks. I guess I could start with that and do my own grafting, but that’s more waiting…
Has hood ever got any strikes for you?
I have a Magness on order from Whiffletree for next spring. I’ve ordered several times from them in the past and I’ve found their bare root trees to be well packaged and with a better root system than most other places. Their trees come in good condition considering the distance to BC (around the end of April in my case). The only real issue is the trees cost when you include shipping. If you are only buying one tree the shipping will cost you more than the tree ($70+). The only way to make that cost effective is if you purchase 4 or 5 trees together. That is what I do, and then the average cost per tree is still less than I can buy a tree for at nurseries where I live. Whiffletree also has a far better selection of fruit trees than you can find at most other places in Canada. Their may be another Ontario source for Magness (forget the name), but they are more expensive than Whiffletree, (and in my case they will not ship to BC).
I feel even though Ontario is a long shipping distance, Whiffle tree is the best option if you can’t find a variety in your home area.
I ended up placing scion order for
Pai Li
Ya li
Shinko
Gem
Also for
Ayers
Magness
Warren
I will start a few espalier on OHxF87 I have ready and park the rest on my two existing trees.
Or bury the graft?
I’m totally inexperienced at propagation so let me check if I’m understanding correctly. Are you saying, plant the sapling, including the existing rootstock, to a deeper depth so that the graft is below ground surface and the scionwood puts in roots? Would you lose some benefits/resistances of the root stock or do you get a pretty healthy tree this way?
Edit: or to phrase that question better, how well does that work in your experience and are there any drawbacks? (Assuming a larger tree is desired and not a drawback)
I have not buried a graft myself, but others have. Hoping they chime in here. The resulting tree would eventually have no dwarfing, as I understand it. You’d get a “standard” sized tree based on scion, so might be a gamble how well that scion functions as a rootstock.
My question would be what rootstock? Quince is dwarfing and ohxf333 is dwarfing so i would guess its one of those. Yes if you bury the tree below the graft union in nearly every case it will root but it can take years to do it. It will grow into a standard sized tree depending on how big the scion was as a seedling. A buried graft suckers profusely.
Sirrine pear - might be another one
Western Cascade Fruit Society
looks like it has sweeter, bartlett-like flavor, but “sprawling” and has at least some resistance to FB (much more than Bartlett? One paper called it “resistant” and ARS-GRIN says “slightly more than Bartlett”)
seems interesting and more ideal for home orchard
Based on the USDA genotyping study, Sirrine = Bartlett x Bosc
At least for my orchard I’m removing Potomac from my list of blight resistant pears. It got clobbered here last year when four other pear varieties had no blight: Warren, Magness, Blake’s Pride and Korean Giant…
Ayers and Leona are very good also. Blakes pride is driving me crazy because it grows slow blooms like crazy and all my pears drop! Seems fireblight proof!
