I hope quince will dwarf as an interstem, here is my second leaf quince that will be interstem material next spring
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I think overall you will get a dwarfing effect with quince interstem. A vigorous scion will be dwarfed but less than a low vigor one. I haven’t tried this combination but this has been the case with others that I have tried.
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I assume you mean quince root - compatible pear interstem - incompatible pear scion… in that setup the pear scion will be fully dwarfed since the underlying root is a dwarf. This was confirmed by half a dozen of these I did.
… This reminds me that I am going to graft some stuff on quince soon, and I forgot to look up whether I need to interstem them or not. … @clarkinks I just found the list of compatible pears you posted, thanks for that ! One is compatible (Urbaniste) and I can use that wood to interstem the other that is not (Winter Nelis).
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Thanks for the info, yes that is what I meant quince rootstock- quince compatible pear as an interstem- and quince incompatible pear as Scion.
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i am growing a quince root stock but i planned on using seedling rootstock and then putting the quince scion in as an interstem then grafting desired pear variety on top. Will the quince interstem not dwarf the desired pear?
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This was what had me worried. I specially ordered some Beurre Hardy scionwood to be used as interstem. Will have to try other cultivars I guess
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What interstem would you recommend for Barttlet on Quince?
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@scottfsmith Glad to hear the list was helpful. I have some quince but less experience using it. Quince on pear fails long term but it takes 2-3 years. I grafted quince to kiefer above as your aware and all grafts failed over time. Some failed right away. Pear on quince is just dwarfed due to incompatability. Im experimenting with pears now that due the same thing with dwarfing. Here is an incompatible pear i tbudded in july 2016 with many buds ready to bloom by april of 2019. My thoughts are any tree i graft with that pears scions is dwarfed and producing quickly.The rootstock has heavy influence on the scion making many lateral branches. In the photo it looks like i bent those branches but i didnt. The incompatible pear rootstock is immune to fireblight. I will continue to test this group of rootstocks which are a seedling callery cross ive worked with for years. The rootstock grown out looks identical in growth to the grafted pear in the picture. This group of callery have odd growth which appears in all cases to be related to their genetics. My guess is my small yellow pear may be a cross of canadian pears / old home similar to how they bred others such as harrow delight. My small yellow pear is compatible with the dwarfing callery rootstock. Im growing farmingdale which is flowering also. Long term i will cross the combination. The branches as you can see by the photo look a little weird.
This is the pears progression from tbud to blooms
My farmingdale tree on callery will flower and when it produces fruit it should give me a good idea how to finish the crosses needed. The ideal is to grow a rootstock that unlike quince does not get fireblight but tgat dwarfs pears. My other concern is if it will deform the fruit or make it small whichi should know shortly.
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Do interstems typically work in both directions? IE: if a variety is a good interstem to put pear on quince, would it also be a good interstem to put that quince on that pear?
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Interstems work in one direction. Pear on quince is normally fine unless its not compatible with quince hence see the list above. In all instances where i tried quince on pear i failed.
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So you can’t use quince as a dwarfing interstem?
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It is very interesting topic. I am planning on grafting quince on unknown pear seedling. I don’t have any other closer quince’s relatives that I can graft onto except the pear tree. I don’t think I want whole lot of quince fruits just few branchesful of quince fruits are more than enough to satisfy my need. However, I have heard the incompatible issue of quince on pears. In attempt to resolve this issue, I grafted a section of ohfx333 rootstock onto the pear seedling (not sure the pear seedling likes this or not yet). I did some reading that the ohfx333 has some quince blood, hopefully it will compatible with the pear seedling on one end and compatible with the quince on the other end. I want to know if anyone here had tried this approach and what was the outcome??
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Unfortunately the whole article at that link is not available. If you dig up a dwarfing stock you will see the roots themselves are much smaller than a full sized stock, so there is no way that an interstem will make a pear on quince act like a pear on a normal pear stock. My guess is what the article is calling “vigorous” is relative to other cultivars on quince it is more vigorous; they still are very dwarfing compared to e.g. seedling pears.
In other words, for a backyard grower any pear interstem compatible with quince should be fine. I have just grabbed random things, this year it was Urbaniste it looks like.
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The bulgarian quince that developed rust in this post Who's growing Quince? later proved incompatible grafted to pear and died. Delayed failure is to be expected with quince grafted to pear
Thanks that was very helpful, I should have considered the context that article was written in.
Has anyone on the list ever grown a quince tree (made root stock) from seed? I didn’t read every post so I may have missed something about that. I picked a few varieties from NCGR Corv and I’m wondering if sprouting some seeds is a worthwhile project?
I don’t have the patience since they grow so well as trees from cuttings. I’m already pretty old, so decades out is pretty iffy.
John S
PDX OR
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A very good updated link from ars grin on quince compatability NCGR-Corvallis: Pyrus Catalog
Remember i usually graft my interstem and graft my top scion at the same time. I’m getting a lot of questions on that lately. Here is an interstem from 2017 i grafted and posted photos of in 2018 just to show how i graft both
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Mentioned this on another thread but seems more relevant here. An old book of mine stated that Duchess “does well” specifically on the Provence quince rootstock. Info is from 1978 so not sure about the accuracy
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In Kansas I abandoned my quince projects. Quince roots do not get deep enough to handle droughts in my area. Additionally rust is a big problem with quince that I feel is growing quickly. Quince might become a problem so close to my pear orchard. Quince rust is to be avoided as it effects fruit. Quince gets fireblight and becomes a problem.
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