Bill.
Great idea and i definately did add a couple of trees this year of KG. Thanks
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Thecityman,
I really enjoy pears so even if I did not sell them I’d still grow them. By the time I get close to retirement I would like to get everything in full production.
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I can’t wait to taste worden so i’m hopeful the grafts will take. I did some top working with it. Gamble grafting is grafting in Kansas this year.
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Clark,
OMG! 600? I have problems of trying to maintain my backyard’s 13, 14 trees!
I assumed that you keep track of what’s the ratio of A. pears vs. E. pears?
Tom
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Tom,
I just have a dozen Asian pears at the moment but that is part of what I’m adding is more rootstock for those. I’m grafting several new varieties of Asian pears this year. My goal is to be growing 50+ types of pears by the end of the year.
Clark
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So far these difficult to graft pears are doing ok with the scions that were added. I sure would not expect more than half the scions will take considering the difficulty of these wild trees combined with the unusual weather. I felt the grafts and the colder they feel means they are alive and so far so good. If they take they will produce pears in 2 years since these are very large trees. If you look close some are in the green tip stage now but that does not mean much in terms of compatibility.
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This is not success it’s merely an update on these difficult to graft pears. There is still plenty of time for graft failures and takes.
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Clark,
I usually knocked off all the growths below the union to get all my grafts growing faster.
Tony
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Yes that’s definitely on my list Tony. Thanks
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Any particular reason that you chose to cleft graft instead of bark graft? I’m assuming it’s because you had some nice thick scions, and your trunk was of adequate diameter.
Clefts heal a little faster than bark grafts and they don’t break off as easy if there is a large amount of growth.
Got it. I’ve never gotten a 100% clear answer as to which I should use other than it depends on the size of the scion and the size of the stock.
I used almost bark grafts almost exclusively last year when I switched over my trees into DR varieties. I had some skinny scions and then most of the trees were about the size of my thumb. Additionally it was my first time grafting, so I was a bit nervous and wanted to fit as many scions on each as I could. Actually I half expected all of them to fail.
This year I’ll be working some onto larger stock, i.e. branches, that don’t have all of their limbs removed, so I’ll probably use cleft for those.
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Sounds good Rally cleft versus rind is just a preference based on situation for me. I use both types of grafts and typically the larger trunks that are to big around I use rind aka bark graft and for smaller branches I can still split with a butcher knife I use cleft.
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That’s basically the feeling I got from many people. From what I’ve gathered is a lot of people may have tried both and prefer one over the other for whatever reason. I know of one person who tried clefts twice, and got none to take, but had 100% on bark… he promptly decided to use bark grafts from then on.
I’m sure it also just depends on the tree as well. Last year I had one tree that I decided to try a cleft on because my nurse branches were only an inch or two lower and if I tried to peel the bark I would have hit them. These were trees in the ground for only one year, so I wasn’t able to really prune the year before to avoid that problem.
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Grafting these difficult wild callery trees is always a lesson in humility with an eventual pay off. Clara frijs does appear to be all I hoped for in terms of compatibility. Douglas look promising but it’s to early to say. Here are some pictures of the progress of the grafts on these difficult pears and a few of the other pear and quince grafts.
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Clark,
Your post made me laugh because at the moment I received it, I had just completed my first pear graft of the year, a Harvest Queen on Harrow Delight OHF.87. Then I executed a few more- see orange tape. The scion came from @TheFluffyBunny.
The red tape is Seckel from @rayrose.
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Looks like excellent grafting Matt !
You might be curious how those harder to graft pears are coming a long. Here are some pictures of some of them failing with inches of growth on them due to incompatibility and others succeeding. Sometimes it comes down to the number of grafts I make and finding compatible scions. These wild callery don’t play by the rule book and just because you do a great job grafting does not mean you will succeed. I’m using kieffer interstems on some of these as you can see that have grown out several years. I grafted a couple of quince on this year to see how those do here. Not all of the tags are spelled correctly and some of the pear varieties are as hard to say as to spell.
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