Wild callery pear rootstocks

I counted three flower clusters!! I was very thankful for a gorgeous day to be out and peering up and around my tree and am so excited! It looks like the Ayers is both leafing out earlier and having flower buds before Moonglow. Is this expectable? If so, maybe the Moonglow will have a few flowers, too. My very untrained eye doesn’t understand the fruiting buds vs vegetative buds. Are the fruiting buds at an angle from the… limb(?) and the vegetative buds are in line with the limb? Thanks so much!

2 Likes

@ClothAnnie. I was looking at my Moonglow today and it is about to bloom (probably tomorrow). My Ayers started blooming about four days earlier. Hope this helps. Bill

3 Likes

@ClothAnnie
Ayers is faster to fruit than moonglow and then sometimes takes a year off. They are medium sized pears that are melting, dripping , sugary sweet but have rare but occasional grit on the flesh next to the red blushed peel. When you see those leaves pop side ways it develops a bloom. You might like this thread Pear buds, blossoms, and fruit 2017. The best part they ripen on the tree and dont rot.

3 Likes

@ClothAnnie
You will love this thread i think Pear trees that produce bushels of fruit and avoid disease. I take a different approach to growing pears than many others do. Anyway back to your question pear fruit buds look like the photo below so i know before the tree breaks dormancy what my pear crop is going to be. You could say pear fruit buds look like tiny little footballs


Then they look like this

Once the buds open then the blooms look like this

Then this

Then this

Then this

Then this

Finally they look like this

At the base of the flowers if they are pollinated properly and if the tree is ready and has plenty of nutrients and water the fruitlets will develop. Flowers will open full and Petals will fall leaving fruitlets forming





Once you look through this thread Pear buds, blossoms, and fruit 2017 you can spot the fruiting trees quickly like i did by your photo.

9 Likes

Great progression pics @clarkinks Very informative for anyone wanting to figure out about their pear trees and what is what :+1:

4 Likes

Got a bucket of wild pear today.

5 Likes

Awesome! What you gonna graft on to them? @Sparty

1 Like

Depends what I get in the mail. I have ordered a bunch of euro pears, but I don’t know what will actually get shipped. If I can’t get scion this year, they’ll just go in the field for future grafting. I have a D’Anjou and Bartlett from a forum member but those will go on OHxF stock.

3 Likes

Gorgeous day to get a pic update on the tree and one of the three blossom clusters. How bad would it be for the tree to have deer eating up a few feet? It’s nice to not have that fence piece around it but maybe it’s permanently necessary.

5 Likes

Somehow I had missed that Ayers ripen on the tree and don’t rot. That’s very cool! I’d read about picking before ripe and then letting pears ripen in cool storage- I though only Asian pears were able to ripen on the tree. Ayers is European, bough, right? I’m slow to learn but so thankful for all the help here! I got a pic of some little fruitlets(?) a couple of days ago.

2 Likes

Very nice! Yes its a european pear hybrid but can ripen on the tree. Thats not common with pears.

Just stumbled onto this. We have terrible problems with the invasive callers pears in my area…SE MO zone 6B.

I am fortunate to not have hardly any on our place, but I do have a couple small saplings in an ivy bed. And just the other day I was wondering why a guy couldn’t graft a fruiting variety into it.

I see there are lots of opinions as to what works and what doesn’t on a callery rootstock. We have hot/humid summers, every bug and disease known to man, and it’ll be planted on a clay hillside. But I’m gonna try it if I can find a scion soon.

Could someone make a good general variety recommendation for someone who knows next to nothing about pears? All my grafting experience thus far had been dormant grafting on apples. But I’d be willing to try chip bud if that’s a better way to go.

5 Likes

@clarkinks @39thparallel or perhaps @Auburn might be able to help you with this question @Nates_9_Acres :+1:

2 Likes

Harrow delight would be a good one to graft to callery if you can find scions at this late date.

2 Likes

Callery has worked well for me as a root stock and they are free. All my pear trees started from Callery seedlings at the back of my property.

4 Likes

I grafted one of the Harrow pears on callery successfully last year. How late in the spring do you field graft pears?

3 Likes

I will say that I have grafted Hood pear on to 3 different callery pear seedlings and they seem to be sprouting and growing :+1:

3 Likes

No problems with Ayers or Bartlett, either.
I did lose grafts of Korean Giant, onto callery,
but it might have been the bark grafting technique, or the stick of scionwood that caused the failure.

2 Likes

I grafted Magness, Vavilov and Potomac on Callery. All doing fine.

2 Likes

Is it too late to graft now? (Assuming I could nab a scion somewhere)

2 Likes