North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Richard Moyer" <ramoyer@gmail.com>]

Betsy Hilborn wrote:

I live in zone 7a in central NC and have a small collection of dwarf,
fire blight resistant apples and pears.

I enjoy quince and service berry and would like to add them to my
orchard, however, I can find no information about fire blight resistant
fruiting varieties.  Does anyone have a suggestion for tasty, resistant
varieties that would do well in my area?

Am I correct in thinking that a locally infected quince may make my
resistant pears more likely to experience an infection?

Thanks for any help that you can provide,

Betsy,

I live in NE TN, other side of the Appalachians.  Have a number of service (june) berry plants.  Never seen blight on them, so don't think you have to worry.  For years there has been a planting (variety trial) of these at Mountain Crops Horticultural Station, same exit as the Asheville Airport, on I-26.  If still there, you could visit during bloom or fruit and select your favorites.  If blight was an issue there, they would have been gone long ago, according to the standards there.

 

As for quince, if you use the Chaenomeles (ornamental, flowering) quince, these are much more resistant to fireblight than the Cydonia quince I have seen locally, and still have usable fruit.  That does not mean that some Cydonia won't make it, just that the multiple Chaenomeles bushes laugh during the most severe fireblight years, being unscathed or with a tiny amount of damage, while blight-sensitive apple or pear trees nearby may be losing whole limbs, and the Cydonia I knew of died to the ground.

 

You can easily transplant suckers of Chaenomeles quince, as they are a bush.  If fireblight was an issue in your area last season, look for quince bushes with no fireblight damage and move some of those.

 

Hidden Springs Nursery, Cookeville, TN, has some nice selections of flowering quince, that fruit reliably for us.  They also have some service berry selections that work well, with no blight on these either under our conditions. 

 

Richard Moyer

Montmorency cherry cheesecake for my daughter's birthday tonight