North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

> I am curious as to what rootstock your Asian pears are grafted on to 
> to make them dwarf.


I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know. When I ordered the first two 
("New Century" and "Starking Hardy Giant") from Stark Bro's Nursery 
almost two years ago, it didn't occur to me to ask. I was even newer at 
all this than I am today. To say that I'd never planted anything before 
would be an exaggeration, but only a slight one. Frankly, I'd never even 
seen an Asian pear - the fruit OR the tree - and all I knew is that I 
wanted them to stay small (when it comes to food, there's very little I 
won't eat, so I wasn't worried about that).

And I misspoke about the Hosui Asian pear I bought this year. It's not a 
dwarf, but a semi-dwarf, on OHxF333 rootstock. I bought that one from 
Sanhedrin Nursery (I've been ordering everything on-line). I had a 
little more room for this one, because after the first plantings, I've 
been finding more places to plant things,... mostly by ripping out 
what's been growing there for years and years. But I still want to prune 
this tree to stay as small as possible.


>  A number of years ago I had grafted some Asian pears onto quince with 
> an Old Home interstem.  They tended to stunt out at a young age.  The 
> last few years I have put the Asian pears onto Pyrodwarf and they seem 
> to do fine although Pyrodwarf is a relative new rootstock.


I'm guessing my dwarf trees are on quince, and I've heard of problems 
with that rootstock (since I planted them, of course). I've never heard 
of Pyrodwarf, and I WAS looking into the rootstock when I ordered last 
fall. I didn't see anything but quince, where the rootstock was 
mentioned at all, which is partly why I went with the semi-dwarf this time.


> I have Korean Giant and Olympic.  The pears from the two varieties 
> visually look the same but when I cut them open and taste them the 
> Korean Giant was sweeter, at least at my location and the environment 
> was the same for both.  I've heard that they are different strains of 
> the same variety.  I just know that there is a difference in taste.


One of the problems with Stark Bro's, I discovered, is that they use 
their own names for some varieties, so it's hard to tell what you've 
really got. They called these two varieties "New Century" and "Starking 
Hardy Giant." But when I was browsing the Internet last year, looking 
for another Asian pear, I heard that New Century was the same as 
Shinseiki. And that Starking Hardy Giant, Olympic, and Korean Giant were 
all the same thing. It doesn't surprise me to hear that they aren't 
quite the same after all, but all I know is that this one is called 
"Starking Hardy Giant" by Stark Bro's.

Thanks for the info, though. I'm always glad to learn.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did 
succeed in making those idiots understand their language. - Mark Twain