me neither. knock on wood.
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This article has an interesting take. Grafting over wild populations of Callery with the goal of getting it to hybridize in the wild with dessert pears. Increasing fruit size to reduce invasiveness.
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i have a mountain ash seedling i grafted to 4 kinds of pear growing in a very wet spot where regular pear rootstock would rot. is it the best rootstock? probably not but it fruited last year at year 5. 3 yrs. after grafting over and its flourishing . if it only produces for 15 -20 yrs before dying, i got my money out of it which was the cost of scions. use what you have available. i also have a ivans belle mountain ash hybrid that i didnt like the fruit. its a nice 8ft tree now sporting 4 different pears from the mountain ash. its a expensive rootstock but at least its being put to good use. both of these trees are doing alot better than my harrow sweet on pear rootstock.
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I had a bradford pear here for 20 years or so… a storm wrecked it and I took it out.
Now I have several callery coming up in the edge of my woods or along roads.
When they bloom I cut them down.
2 of those I forced to move out to my orchard… and have them working on… growing kiefer, improved kiefer, bell, potomac, warren, karls favorite pears now.
One other in the edge of my field is growing Orient pears now.
If I find others in good sunny locations I may add other pear varieties… if not in good sunny locations will take them out.
TNHunter
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Callery/Bradford Pear stink, literally stink
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@JesusisLordandChrist … agree…stink.
They were so popular because of the bloom… definately not for the smell.
TNHunter
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I’m looking forward to seeing the Vermont Cabot pear tree bloom. I want to see a fully double pear blossom.
Now if I could just find a pear with red blossoms…
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All pear trees smell bad. The smell is like some rutty old goat had used it for his favorite tree to piss on for the last 3 months. Thankfully pears smell totally different from how they taste.
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I have had good luck with OHxF87 over the past 7 years. No Fire Blight at all.
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I thought fireblight affects just the scion and not the roots, lol
Here in East Texas we have some fireblight. I bought some trees hoping they will do well, but they are from big box stores and I don’t know their rootstock…
I’m hoping they will do well. They are a Moonglow, Kieffer, Pineapple, Orient, and Perdue
Am I screwed for not selecting a good rootstock? I’m so new
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Prune out suckers from roots and below graft before spring. You should be fine.
That’s awesome, thank you. I do that every time I see a sucker anyway.
I also have 3-4 large callery pears that I’ll be using as rootstock. Would you guys cut them and graft to the trunk, or would you graft to a sucker?
Pedro
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What size caliper at 8"? I have 1/2" stocks and will be topping the stock and cleft grafting with matching diameter grafts. If it’s a larger stock use 2 scions and pick dominant one later.
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They are large, so I guess I’ll have to do bark grafts.
Regarding pruning suckers, do you recommend not to prune them if it’s spring to prevent fireblight? Or would you cut them as soon as you see them?
I walk my orchard twice a week
Pedro
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Wading into this discussion… I’m in central/western VA and “rewilding” about 10 acres. Callery (and autumn olive) pop up in my fields routinely. I can whack them down, treat the stumps with tripolcyr, and replace with any number of trees (and have seeded quite a few oaks), but I also don’t see the problem with grafting callery. I have about 300 apples trees and spent a couple bucks per tree for rootstock. I have about 100 pears grafted on callery (for free). If they give me 8-10 years of fruit… great. Free fruit is excellent (and I give most of it away). And those trees haven’t diminished my enthusiasm for sowing acorns (and black walnuts and shagbark hickory and chokecherry, etc.).
Bottom line: I like having some pears and don’t see the point of buying rootstock when it occurs without my intervention in my field. I should also say that I approach my property from the perspective of “benign neglect” (which hundreds of rabbits, birds, and insects appreciate), but if I can nudge a few invasives out of that category and into one that’s productive, yep, to me, that’s a win. I feel similarly about multiflora rose, another problem in my field, particularly my fence line. But it provides ample opportunity to multiple many, many beautiful roses to my property while eliminating the reproduction problem.
But, hey, if some people want to go all crazy about ripping out their callery and multiflora rose, that’s cool. Me? I appr
I
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In North Carolina all those new built homes the built around Raleigh were landscaped with bradford pears. At bloom the whole neighborhood would stink. Stink to the point of me wanting to vomit. After the first time I didnt go there to visit my friend during bloom anymore, I would stay away.
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Sorry for the tangent, but is anyone aware of any pear species that are native to North America?
*edit, did a search and answered my own question - apparently not.
I am trying to remove invasive plants from my property in favor of some at least native to the NE US. Common buckthorn, tatarian honeysuckle, japanese barberry, multifora rose are making way for pawpaw, american persimmon, american hazelnut, spicebush, sweetfern, plus converting grass on a few places too steep to mow to native wildflowers. To be fair, I have plenty of modern apples too, but long term want to introduce M. Coronaria, M. Ioensis (got some help from a community member this year!), and M. angustifolia genes into my breeding efforts.
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Has anybody looked into growing pears on their own roots? You’d get more diversity in rootstock that way too, plus no adaptability issues.
One of the reasons to chose one known rootstock vs another is vigor and the ability to control tree size, precocity to some extent and fruit size.
Yes, but it comes with a cost: lack of genetic diversity.
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