Pears and Rootstock Trials: Summer Field Notes

a russian pear on its own roots

encouraged by success with ohxf87 last summer, a clonal stock that actually doesn't stoolbed well, but does root from softwood - I tried a few other pears this summer. The premise is that ohxf87 is zone 4 hardy, and...

russian pear sizing up on these saskatoon grafts from 2022

the tag was lost on this graft but it's likely Bolshaya, which means big. I've found that pear grow quite well on saskatoon, though it does best on younger ones maybe 1/2 - 3/4" diameter stems should be used, and by this...

pears shooting up from these root cuttings

ussurian doesn't do this as much as siberian crabapple, but it does and would make for so e cool bonsai. last photo is a bundle of plugs from last fall, yes you can leave plugs in the shrink wrap and just water them, the...

ohxf87 pear rootstock, you can propagate from softwood

in fact it doesn't stool very well, pear doesn't have the same adventitious buds along the root crown like apple. what this means is, if you chop these off and expect shoots you can hill up like the way an apple stoolbed...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

large pear and apple trees top worked last year into multiple cultivars mostly as a store for scion wood

topping up sawdust in this ussurian pear stoolbed

It’s just getting established...

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...