Top working Callery Pears weather permitting

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.

5 Likes

Still to early to know if Worden will take Matt.

Potomac is an aggressive grower! Couple of people gave me scions.

2 Likes

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.

2 Likes

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.

5 Likes

Did you graft Worden onto a known-to-be compatible Euro? Or onto a Bradford/ Callery?

1 Like

Matt,
I grafted worden on a callery that has an interstem of kieffer that should be compatible. Since worden is hard to get I was as careful as possible.

This is a pear I top worked . Starting to grow . It is on wild callery . Was grafted to sugar sweet . Last year I added Maxine . This year I added Honey sweet , Hudar and Savinac .

I also tried grafting onto a couple of wild Hawthorn trees . Scion buds are starting to break . Still too early to call it a success .

3 Likes

Great looking tree Jerry. In a couple of years that tree will be turning out a lot of pears! It’s always hard to make the time but when you do find the time to graft it’s always worth it! In case anyone was wondering how I came out with those hard to graft pears I got some scions to take on every tree. I’m learning pear compatibility Information every day as I observe them

6 Likes

Did Clara frijs seem more compatible than other varieties you have grafted in the past?

1 Like

Clars frijs, douglas, old fashioned kieffer all seem to make very good interstems because they are highly compatible. I have one tree that rejected douglas this year and it’s still a fairly young tree. All clara frijs, old fashioned kieffer, and douglas scions took where at least 3-5 years of other pear scions failed on wild callery. I have several other varieties showing very interesting traits but that will be another topic another time.

1 Like

Here’s my Korean Giant on Summercrisp cleft. Parafilm and rubberband dried out.

6 Likes

Nice looking graft Kelby! What do you think of Summercrisp? Are you grafting it over because it’s worse than Korean Giant or just for an addition on the tree?

The summercrisp was a free tree from the nursery I used to work at (rabbit damage). It hasn’t fruited yet, but I haven’t read anything glowing about it, whereas I know I like KG. There are some lower branches of summercrisp still.

2 Likes


Pear on hawthorn . Looks promising .

3 Likes

Pear grafts growing .

3 Likes

Jerry,
Looks good that will work & will pay off before you know it.

So how do things look a month later? These old callery pears once again did prove to be difficult to top work! The difference this time was the scions I used seem to be more compatible than others. So I grafted them on march 25th and today is may 30th and I would say the growth is acceptable and it appears the problems with top working these trees may be behind me now. How are your top working projects going?

5 Likes

My top worked pear is growing fast .

6 Likes