Wild callery pear rootstocks

May have to take a drive. :smiley:

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I got this tiny little wild callery rootstock and I grafted to it last fall. I’m amazed it took considering how hard it was to work with such a tiny plant. Scion is Harrow Sweet. I see the rootstock leafing out now but the scion is still dormant. Should I rub off all the leaves from the rootstock now or wait until scion breaks bud?

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I would rub those leaves off.

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About above graft: it turned out the only bud on my graft is a flower bud. Now what?
If I remove the flowers will it create leaf growth?

Actually I found the answer to my question. Posting the link in case somebody else needs the answer:

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I top worked a bigger callery pear today and grafted to 2 more smaller ones. I didn’t get pics of the smaller ones but did get some of the topworking :+1:

I am going to put the step by step of this process in my Orchard Projects thread Here

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Shy on # of scions, and no nurse limbs. But, maybe it will turn out ok anyhow.
Neat work.

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There are a couple nurse limbs but some of them are in the back. I am running low on scions and still have another one to do, so I used what I could without using them all :+1:

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You can use one bud per scion is OK too.

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I used some longer scions because I have an abundance of moonglow but don’t need or want a lot of those. Great variety but I want some variation in what I have.

I’ve promised a neighbor to top work a Bradford…don’t know if I’ll use all the scions I have…but quite possibly I’ll need all of 'em.

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I know it’s been a long time but I thought I’d update. I’m including pics of both my grafted Callery and our back field that’s basically only Callery, Himalayan blackberry, autumn olive, and honeysuckle… the blooming Callery trees stand out right now. But my grafted tree is only having leaves coming in, still no flowers.

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My local experience, which admittedly includes some poor grafts in some poor locations, is that the Asian pears don’t take very well on callery, but Euros do alright. Pears also seem to grow ok on hawthorn.

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I was told that if you pick off the flower then the bud will revert to a vegetative bud. I tried it twice and it did not revert. Others say it works.

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In Nebraska, all my European and Asian pears are grafted on Cleveland flowering pears. I usually harvest 500 + pounds of pears for families each season.

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@ClothAnnie
Excellent you have a flower bud! Time passes quickly no matter what we do so we might as well be eating pears right? Leave the flowers and enjoy that pear if it develops this year! Next year and the year after that tree will be loaded. Hope you graft over more of them soon! The wild callery will pollinate those tame pears so dont worry about that.
@tjasko
I had that problem and i learned its just the genetics of those specific callery. Other callery do fine with both euro and asian. Some wild callery are now crossed with bet rootstock. I tried chojuro on 20 callery all failed to take the graft so i wrongly assumed that was a big enough group but what i didnt realize is all these genetically unique callery all graft different. I got a seperate bundle of callery that was completely different and since then ive planted hundreds some wild and some not and they are all different types and some graft asian and euro great whereas others dont graft any pear easily.

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Thanks so much but it was someone else who had a bud. No flower or buds yet. I’m wondering if it’s just a maturity of the tree, or a genetic problem. The tree still seems to be growing very well, but just leaves. Hmmm. I think it’s has Ayers and moonglow… I would love to craft over more of them, my main problem is that the deer definitely munch on the tame pear trees (not the Callery, from what I can see!). I now wonder if genetics would be an issue with all of them but I do have a lot of rootstock with which to try. :slight_smile:

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@ClothAnnie,

Think you do have a cluster of flowers! Look in the middle of that photo! Grown pears a long time so please go check again! That tree is saying its very close to ready to produce pears in several ways. Next year will be better and the next year you will get alot more pears.
20200324_190649
Fruit buds are shaped like this
20200324_191534
Vegetative buds are shaped like this
20200324_191719
The flowers are not open yet so they are harder to see. It may pop out another one or two blooms because the tree is nearly ready which you can tell by the shape of the limbs on the tree. Dont know if it will set fruitlets or not but it will bloom.

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Oh, wow!!! I totally haven’t noticed that- rather humbling, I must say! I will have to look in person tomorrow- thanks sooo much!

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Here’s Vavilov pear (Rousselet of Stuttgart x Dr. Jules Guyot No. VII- crossed in Russia as I understand it). I grafted only two years ago on a wild Callery of some kind. Notice horizontal branch = early bearing in this case

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