I grafted several varieties onto my wild pears. Harrow Delight and Korean Giant have done well, but Butirra Morettini has grown like a monster on the wild pear.
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Thanks so much! I saw in the thread above that you prefer cleft grafting, but I was worried that the two main trunks on this callery would be too thick for that. At what thickness do you think it becomes too hard to cleft graft? The other resource I found, even though its not for pears, was this: Grafting - Peterson Paw Paws. It was helpful to me to figure out where the “cambium” is. Is it similar on a pear tree? Do you think it is easier to line the cambium up with a cleft graft? Because I’ve never done this before, my biggest concern is not finding the cambium. For a 4"diameter trunk, would you do two (or more) scions?
Also, I was planning to do this big project in early March. Are there any specific weather conditions or temperatures that I should look out for to increase the likelihood of success?
The salt rarely blows into the yard too much, because there’s a bit of a grassy marsh across the channel that baffles the biggest waves/spray. So, hopefully that’ll be good for the tree!
I’d probably make the big chop at about 4.5 to 5 feet high, just because I think that’s where the trunks/branches become a bit more manageable in size. At that point, there’s two main trunks, one tinier trunk (about 1.5 inches in diameter) that sort of snakes its way around one of the main trunks before branching out, and several tinier branches/twigs. Looking at how you shape your trees, I wasn’t sure if I should keep the 1.5" trunk (to give more opportunities to graft), or remove it, because it starts out so crowded to one of the main trunks. Do you have any thoughts? My original plan was to do grafts of harrow sweet onto one of the main trunks, grafts of harrow delight onto the second main trunk, and then potomac onto the tiny 1.5 inch trunk/branches.
I feel like you’re the hands-down pear expert on this forum, so I really appreciate your advice!
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I’m trading paw paw for your harrow delight scions, so it’s good you’re chiming in! I don’t know anything about Butirra Morettini. Do you think I should graft some of it into my callery? What does it taste like, and is it disease resistant?
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4" is OK to cleft graft but any larger use rind aka bark grafts but those take longer to heal over. Don’t have a favorite graft I use them all.
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I got it because it was listed as a favorite on a curator’s list. It was just grafted last year so I can’t comment on anything other than it’s aggressive growth and easy grafting. I’ll send you some scion…I have plenty. Here’s a description as copied into the forum by Clark:
Butirra Rosata Morettini— A gorgeous early fall pear. Large; skin yellow with bright red blush; flesh white, juicy, flavor excellent; ripens six to seven days before Bartlett. Tree very vigorous; self-incompatible and considerably parthenocarpic; scarcely compatible with quince rootstock; peduncle thick and short; susceptible to fireblight.
Note: mine were not labeled as Rosata, just Butirra Morettini.
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I grafted B.M. two years (I originally thought it was just last year) ago to a wild pear a little smaller than your tree. Here’s what it looks like today.
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Wow! That’ll be bearing in no time!
Have you had any disease issues with it? That’s my biggest concern, because my parents are on a bay, and the marsh across the channel from them is actually a wildlife/bird preserve, so they can’t use any gardening chemicals.
Also, a general grafting question: would giant fast growth on the B.M. crowd out the other varieties or make them less likely to take/survive? I’m new to this, so I’m never sure what the “right” thing to do is.
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I’ve only had B.M. for two years with no blooms, so no idea on disease pressure. I could see it outgrowing other grafts on your tree. I’ll throw in a couple sticks and you can throw them away if you decide not to use it. I’ll have way more of it than I need. That tree is just there to baby sit different varieties until I need them on other trees.
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If your not familiar with Stephen Hayes the videos from fruitwise will help you
This may be helpful as well
Pears graft easily. If it were me i would stick to your 3 picks that are disease resistant. @Sparty offer is fantastic in most situations but non disease resistant pears need sprayed sometimes and you would not have the option. Most of the pear varities we are discussing on this thread are so rare there is hardly any information available on them. The more we grow them the more common the information will be shared amongst growers.
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Thanks!
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Great job on that top work let us know when it fruits. Better check and see if my morretinni survived the wind storms once it warms up. Got a lot of trees with damage from the last several years. It’s really bad if they are heavy with fruit and we get a wind storm. My rootstock never gets damaged but my fruiting pears do which is a tip for us to leave as much rootstock as we can in this climate. Bradford callery damage easily but the callery i see that are of wild genetics do not damage easily at all.
excellent videos
I still think that a lot of surface to heal though after the grafts take
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There is something very satisfying about eating so many pears off a top worked douglas pear! Its a big producer now.
After all these years the knothole is still there but closing slowly. Here is the original photo below. Painted that very large branch i removed with pruning seal at the time.
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There are many callery and BET to do, and it is nearly time to do it.
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After years of production from this tree, now the only thing i can say is that my one regret is not grafting a year earlier. Many used these methods, and if you did, you have been eating pears for years.
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Korean Giant and Clapp’s Favorite Pear both seem to be rust resistant, the rust hit the Hillside Hawthorne like crazy last year, and killed all their fruit, but doesn’t touch our pears.
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My pears are at my parents’ house, so I had to wait until today to give an update (I’m visiting for Easter weekend).
They’re all budding out!!! I pruned them down a bit, so they’re all the same size, and hopefully no more will snap off in the wind.
The harrow sweets have many leaf buds, the emergency labor-day mega-chip graft I did of harrow delight is growing and has leaf buds, and the big harrow delight even has flower buds! Should I remove the flower buds, or let them go and see what happens?
I think maybe I’ll have pears in a year or two! I’m very excited!
For reference, this is what they looked like almost exactly a year ago, when I grafted them on Easter 2022.
Of the original 8 grafts, 5 grew so big they snapped off, which is why I ended up doing the emergency chip bud and pruning the remaining big grafts back so hard. Does the pruning look ok, or did I over do it?
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They look good, but it would be best to prune off any crossed branches or branches that are growing pointed towards the inside of the tree. The fruit will come very soon with harrow delight and harrow sweet. Looks like you will have a couple of pears this year. It’s ok if you leave the fruit buds for now. Don’t keep over one or two pears if the fruit sets. It might be best to remove all the blooms because the fruit won’t be very good this year anyway. The tree can put that bloom strength in the limbs, which is best. There is something wonderful about eating the pears off the first tree you graft so no one blames you if you leave the fruit.
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