These posts cover pears, rootstock trials, and the long process of figuring out what combinations handle our climate. Everything is grouped by season, and the captions capture the small wins, losses, and questions along the way.
Questions and comments always welcome to doug@oaksummitnursery.ca.
Pears And Rootstock Trials
42 postsArticle build 2026-02-01 12:03
Spring
18 posts
Top working russian pears onto saskatoon, z-grafts continue to be my goto for this. and I'm fluent in all the grafts availble ;) this really is the best option I know of. if the diameters match I switch to whip and tongue. sometimes I'll throw in a bark graft or a modified cleft.
Double working pears, here is paul pear on saskatoon as an interstem, with favoritka red on top. it's experimental, but I've noticed some pears take off and grow more vigorously on saskatoon, and some of these could be interstems.
Bolshaya pear full of flowers. It's grafted onto saskatoon, which can be precocious and it's dwarfing. I'm out grafting more pears this week.
Couple of russian pears grafted in 2022 about to flower. excited to try them. one of the photos is the graft union on saskatoon, holding up well.
Ussurian pear ready to transplant. the large pear seeds take off and grow quickly, I started some in community pots just to save on greenhouse space. pear is tricky to grow under lights or with close spacing, there's foliar disease that will turn the leaves black and defoliate if there isn't enough airflow, apples will get scab, pears get this. thinking I'll pot up and move them outside, even though we had ice on the pond this morning, a bit of frost should be fine, cold nights will slow them down but since they were started outside I think there's enough cold resistance
Apples and pears ready to plant. the root cellar has been warming up so everybody is awake and taking off. I think there's maybe 500 trees here, didn't really count them. 6x6 spacing in a 3 ft x 20 ft bed is about 250 in a bed, so 2 beds. #grafting #propagation #applegrafting
Bark grafts on an old pear tree, top worked two years ago from ussurian pear. It's mostly a tree to grow out scion wood. I don't usually make cuts so large but they'll eventually heal over.
Ussurian pear grafted on saskatoon in 2022 flowering in it's third year.
Field grafting pears onto saskatoon #grafting. going back to paint the stumps before it rains, the parafilm is ok but not sealed enough
Ussurian pears, siberian crabapples an interesting wild small fruited one, wax currants (ribes cereum)
Ussurian pears on about day 7 from germination are getting their first leaves. growing pears in pots indoors can be tricky, I always seem to get some fabraea leaf spot, aka leaf blight, black spot. pear inside usually completely die from it after growing a few sets of healthy leaves, outside it's less of an issue. first time trying them in a greenhouse. good air circulation helps, clean medium helps, and probably a spray bottle of captan will help.
Night grafting with a headlamp. I've had a few late nights working around the nursery with these bright led headlamps. Here I'm working over some tall saskatoon to russian pears at around shoulder height to stay above the browse line. #grafting
Bench grafting russian pears in my kitchen this morning. #grafting
Pear seeds after three weeks in stratification, good thing I checked they're supposed to need sixty days. my fridge is at 1-2 C (34F) and these germinated in the cold.
Wild rootstock project continues, we're grafting plums onto choke cherry and pears onto saskatoon. (prunus virginiana and amelanchier alnifolia) .. selecting vigorous previous year growth, 12-36". the goal is to find the most graft compatible zone 3 hardy species/cultivars. there are some good candidates, we're working not just different cultivars but different species of prunus - all of which are known to have some compatibility but have not been fully explored or studied in our climate and for our hobbyist / food forest application. this also serves as a reserve of scion wood for next year when we'll have many more typical pear and plum rootstocks ready to graft onto. #grafting #permaculture
Apple on Saskatoon graft. In late summer well past grafting season I grafted onto about a dozen small trees, happy to see most are leafing out. Saskatoon is in the Rosacea family with apples and pears and has been used experimentally as a dwarfing rootstock for them. There's some conventional wisdom that pears will work, but few reports about Malus. This is an excellent result and will be followed up on. #grafting
Russian pear grafted into wild Saskatoon #grafting #backyardnursery #fruittreenursery #orchard #backyardorchard
First #peartree #blossoms of the year have appeared in the nursery orchard #blossom . #fruittreenursery #fruittrees #backyardnursery
Summer
9 posts
Ohxf 87 softwood rooted heavily after a few weeks. pear rootstocks have been a bottleneck, so hoping this gives me some more supply. In Canada we just don't have access to bulk rootstocks like in the US, they're at least 6-8 ea and limited to mostly less cold hardy options. as a small nursery the only realistic option is to propagate your own, and for zone 2-3 we often use seedlings. pear seedlings are a bit tricky to grow, I'm getting better at it and found a better supply of the seeds but it still takes 2 years to get them up to size to graft, so far. clonal pear stocks are less cold hardy but much easier if I can get a stoolbed going.
Ussurian pear on saskatoon gets this attractive red foliage by mid summer.
Intergeneric grafts on saskatoon, first one is hawthorn, which is producing lots of growth with crazy 3" thorns, second is double worked pears, an interstem of a fast growing variety topped with favoritka red, a hard to find russian pear. if you make it to the last one it's a 3 minute walk through of this block of grafts in a partly shaded forest area #grafting
Favoritka pear, on saskatoon 3 year old graft first year flowering. determined to get to try these russian pears this year, maybe I should do a japanese style protective bag over it.
New pear grafts, about three weeks for them to leaf out, this is when I start to check for rootstock shoot extension and keep it managed, these are top worked saskatoon trees so it's good to leave some lower growth to keep the tree healthy
Walk around my experimental pear orchard, grafted onto saskatoon. five min video. maybe I should be shooting for youtube, really this is mostly for my own video documentation, or if you've thought about growing pears on saskatoon rootstock this give you an idea of what 1-3 year old grafts can look like. site conditions will change the results, this is on established trees at shoulder height to stay above the browse line, also dense with some shade. hoping to start getting fruit next year, and I expect most will need staking.
Large pear and apple trees top worked last year into multiple cultivars mostly as a store for scion wood. #grafting
Topping up sawdust in this ussurian pear stoolbed. It's just getting established. #stoolbed
On old harbin pear tree top worked to produce scion wood. Working over old trees like this can take one scion and multiply it for the next grafting season. This spring I used many of the scions to graft new pears, and also to graft onto saskatoon. #propagation
Fall
12 posts
Rootstock stoolbeds, one is b118 with the dark purple bark, and the other is ottawa3 . most of my rootstocks are seedlings, but stoolbeds are easy and convenient, they make a larger caliper shoot in the first year, the root system is smaller and more fibrous , you get the benefits of the clonal stock, some dwarfing, disease resistance, uniformity. you can start small, our ottawa3 bed started with 2 trees this spring. it made 4 good shoots, which I replanted, so now there's 6 stools and the 2 established ones should produce heavier next year. and so on. also doing this with ohxf87, though pear is more fickle.. with the upside that I was able to easily root some softwood, so if the grafts survive a zone 3 winter, might be lots of ohxf stocks in a couple years. btw ussurian does not root easily, I gave up on vegetative propagation with it, luckily we're flush with seeds. one day i'll have a renewable supply of hundred of pear stocks to graft, for this season it's fewer. if only i could buy them at some reasonable cost in canada.. americans have an under appreciated bounty of cheap rootstocks available to them that we do not up here.
Ussurian pear started in large plug trays. They can be a bit tricky to grow in trays or beds so I've had better luck in the first year as a plug. some of these are large enough to graft next spring, though most I think should grow another year in the ground. i'm growing 20:1 apples just because of rootstock availability in Canada, for zone 3 pears. basically they need to be seedlings, and basically you need to grow them yourself. I'm going to try some varied trays and small beds next spring as well, since stooling ussurian didn't produce results . some ohxf87 is possible though it's more of a zone 4 stock.
Hedge cotoneaster, collected fruit today. I root these from softwood, but seed might be easier aside from the extended stratification needed, one month or more warm then 4 months cold. this plant is super interesting as a dwarfing pear rootstock, it has good long term compatibility. I'm planning to make it one of our pear rootstocks.
Ussurian pear, filled some crates this morning. need to get some beds planted this fall for rootstocks
Krazulya pear, just one small one on the graft. a few of our pears have red leaves after a crazy heat wave this week.
Collecting scion wood from this old pear tree. I top worked it over to different varieties a couple of years ago and now it's good for saving these genetics and producing material for grafting every year.
Shmaven helping with the pear stoolbed. So seedling ussurian pears didn't root with the setup, maybe I should be using ohxf. to savage I left a root cutting for each in place, and collect some rootstocks but not as many as if the shoots had rooted. next summer will try painting the new growth with iba or iba+naa and using drip tape to keep the sawdust from drying out. and well, also planting new beds of seedlings. it takes 2 years to get a pear seedling up to size so far, and zone 3 hardy pear rootstocks are tricky to stoolbed it seems #stoolbed
Kinda tasty, these pears have been ripening on the ground. sure the texture is a bit grainy but the flavour has some bright fruity taste going along with pear, I could see making something with them.
Ussurian pears covering this old road. I filled some bags, this is my pear rootstock in the nursery and it's ideal to find local seeds. I'll have more than enough this fall to add them to our seed shop. #wildlpear #ussurianpear
Ussurian pear stoolbed just about dormant, it's the first year and I started mid summer so will see if it worked. hard frosts all week here
Lifting more trees today, in order: Nanking cherry, ussurian pear. Most these we'll grow for a second year, some I think are big enough to offer on our site this winter. #bareroot #bareroottrees #treenursery
Some apples in our pears, easy to sort out when the colors change
Winter
3 posts
Just a big handful of grafted pears available this winter. I'm working on ramping up rootstock production, but it's tough in Canada. ohxf87 is in the works, but it just doesn't work for us to buy them in, I haven't found a supplier for ussurian seedlings or ohxf87 at some reasonable wholesale rate. so I grow my own. ussurian pear seedlings, more so than siberian crabapple really do take an extra year or two produce a grafted tree. next summer I'm going to expand ohxf87 softwood propagation, and add in some experiment pear stocks, like cotoneaster and any see if any of our russian pears are candidates. pears essentially, don't stoolbed easily, at least the rootstocks that are cold hardy, but it seems some of them do root from softwood.
Ussurian pears from a row of old trees, collected for seedling rootstocks. also called harbin pear after the region in siberia where hansen collected them in the early 1900s, and brought them back to SD for breeding work #pear #rootstock #seedsaving
Ussurian pear in two lots, on the left imported from china and the right collected locally. the seeds are a little different, from genetic variation or more likely some hybridization.