I’ve grown BET and ohxf as a replacement for callery in recent years. The thing i have unfortunately found out many times over is that these rootstocks are not as resistant to the strains of fireblight. Many were killed to ground in the last year. Callery is still the best rootstock but now considered an invasive. Ironic to me that many people in this world would love to have a pear to eat and wont get one.
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I had my first callery root and a 2022 Bartlett graft succumb to fireblight last summer. Several such grafts have succeeded…including at least one Bartlett and one tree even has 8 varities I’ve grafted to it…about 5 have fruited.
Have a ten or so young trees on OH x F (87,97,333)
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The new strains of fireblight have not hit everyone yet but trust me they are making there way around the country now. They have killed ohxf333 to the ground in a day that was a 10 foot tree i was testing with. Farmingdale seems much more resistant than the rootstocks we currently have.
I thought that scions take a long time to fruit on callery?
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In kansas they seem to not be much longer than other things. OhXf333 tends to fruit quicklly but the fruit is small at first
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They classify these things invasive; but they are never going to eradicate them. They are all over the place,
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In defense of Bradford Pear{or alternatively "Why cry now}
It really kills me when our own Government makes a very deliberate “Solution”; then many decades later it is morphed into a moral outrage.
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Bartlett, Korean Giant, Yoinashi…fruited 16 months after grafting to an 8 foot callery…ripe fruits I mean.
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Our government said Covid came from a meat market,
and have since confessed they intentionally lied for they
had the evidence it came from a lab they funded. So, no surprise they change their minds on pears or kudzu, etc.
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Lol…Come on man…
Covid came from slutty Pangolians having perverted sex acts with Fruit Bats
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That’ll do it every time.
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I’ve had two pears fruit within 3 years grafted to callery, and one fruit very lightly in its 2nd year. Fireblight hasn’t yet been an issue for these rootstocks here.
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My callery pear graft fruited the second year. The squirrels got all 3 large fruits
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Even with a preventative fungicide regime? or all naturale?
At this point, they could be called “established” or “naturalized”… but, I don’t run a herbicide company and have no influence among decision makers 
It seems that plowing under miles of native grassland to plant non-native corn is an acceptable reason to cause nearly irreversible ecological disaster. It seems that callery, if properly managed could feed people in certain parts of the country, so why not plow under miles of corn to plant callery for an orchard? Oh well. Optics and $$$. Send me your callery seeds and I’ll get started
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Wait? What? Corn is not a USA native?
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Mexico.
It is where it originated. But it spread across the Americas fast and forever ago.
Spread by humans. Still not native
Of course maybe humans aren’t either. Exotic invasive species that is generally very damaging to the environment.
Yeah; I think the definition of invasive is dumb then. If the plant brings greater good or societal benefit; it is not invasive IMO. It is “cultivated”.
Corn good. Hairy Vetch??? Not so much.
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