Pears and Rootstock Trials

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 these russian pears like bogataya grow vigorously where I've grafted them onto saskatoon - and they are solid zone 3 hardy. also they have excellent large pears - a result from decades of breeding work in russia. So about 40-50% take on this set, a small rooting result what I would call light rooting, but maybe it's enough. the cuttings also suffered some +35C days with a heat mat left on, something I've learned not to ignore. anyway it's an encouraging result, enough to say that next year I'll take many more cuttings.

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 year I would recommend leaving some branches of the rootstock to grow below them. The reason, my healthiest grafts are like this. Some of the older ones show signs of die back in the trunk after a few years, and I suspect it just related to the mature tree's ability to recover from the hard pruning, so leaving some undergrowth, keep it trimmed or tipped so it doesn't overtake the top is probably a good cultivation technique. This is commonly called out for pear on cotoneaster grafts as well.

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 trees don't know they aren't in a plug tray anymore. this actually works better than you would expect, I have couple bins of plugs still waiting to either go into the ground or into pots

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 works, well it doesn't. but the softwood can root so it has some promise, pear roostocks have been in short supply at our nursery, growing out ussurian seedlings can be challenging, and slow. stooling so far no luck, and really all of the clonal stocks in Canada are both expensive, hard to source, and not cold hardy. ohxf87 can work if the graft is low, so we're going to try it. maybe some cotoneaster as well.

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