The tilt test and black seeds are an indicator it is time to pick them and let them ripen until soft inside. They turn a light yellow color.
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Thanks, Clark! I put the three uncut ones in the fridge last night. So Iām looking for that green skin to yellow a bit and them to feel a bit softer? What about fridge vs counter?
Thank you SO much for sharing your knowledge with me all these years! Itās amazing to have what was just another Callery (interestingly it barely if at all still puts up any sprouts from the rootstock) turn into good fruit!!
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HI Clark! Im looking at getting some of these Callery seedlings in the wintertime. Granted, I doubt they have gone through such extreme natural selection as yours, but they should do the job. Im assuming they are as vigorous as communis seedling, but not sure. What can I expect vigorwise?
I also want to stay away from vigorous pears that will get too tall. Iām thinking asian pears, H.sweet, seckleā¦ any others that are naturally smaller trees?
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Callery is a very vigorous rootstock. Even small varieties will tend to get large when grafted on it. I have an Akers on Callery that was roughly 5/16 inch when I grafted it last spring. It is over 1.5 inches diameter at the graft now and the tree is about 14 feet tall.
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Wow. Thats huge! Gotta get something precocious to saddle it down!
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I may have made a baaaad mistake. I gave a it 2 shovels full of chicken manure early this spring. Every time I walk by it, the wind whispers āfeeed meeeeā.
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If you want i can send you some scions next year that will runt out callery. Im not sure what kind of pears they are but you could use them.as an interstem if nothing else. I have some that will runt callery to 8 feet. I keep them around just for that purpose.
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Thanks Clark. Maybe I should just use them for Asian pears. How would they respoond to late summer topping? I am also getting some ohf84 and 97, so they would grow the smaller trees I want.
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I like callery for everything.
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Would a 15ā height be manageable through late summer pruning of leader?
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Yes just make sure you get a fireblight tolerant type of pear. Get the branches going out but plan for extra distance between pears like this How to Prune a Pear Tree: 12 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow
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Thanks!
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Do deer generally strip young callery of new growth as aggressively as they do other pears/apples/etc? I know the callery seedlings make it in the wild a lot more, but a tree producing 250k seeds/year or whatever is going to win the numbers game.
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They will at first, but very soon the indigestion will change their minds.
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It has excellent fireblight resistance!
Every Hosui died. Every graft and my tree, one open cut was a Death sentence.
My Korean Giant aka Olympic grafts and tree didnāt even flinch at fireblight.
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With my attempts to find a better apple rootstock for my buddyās deer hunting swamp, I thinking callery pear would probably perform best where there is often standing water.
This past weekend I went to a powerline ROW that was a āforestā of callery pear last summer, until they mowed everything to the ground. Now itās a forest of callery pear suckers about 18 inches tall. I made several stool beds with buckets and composted sawdust. The callery suckers seem to vary somewhat, some very thorny, some with no thorns, some a deep green color and some with a pink/red tinge to them. I found one that Iām excited about, it is thornless and a deep red color, leaves and stem is all this color. If it stays this color, it might be helpful as a rootstock being able to identify any growth coming up from a grafted tree.
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The good news is that Betulafolia is a better Asian pears rootstock than Callery, overall. So even though there are wonderful features to Callery, BET has some of the best features, like drought resistance.
I was just watching a video about how the 20th century was the wettest in a millennia in the American west, so unfortunately drought resistance is going to be more and more important in the coming years, at least out west.
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The next step is to chainsaw that top off next spring, and bark graft some other varieties all around.
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What is everyoneās experience with graft compatibility? I got no takes with Euro pears on the callery here but Asian and hybrids did fine.
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