rootstock stoolbeds, one is b118 with the dark purple bark,

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.