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[nottke1 <nottke1@earthlink.net>]

David,
I had an old pear tree that was all spurs, produced bushels of pears in spite 
of thinning to less than one fruit per spur, and it had less than 2 inches of 
spindly new growth each year.  The tree was about 100yrs old.  An local 
grafter told me to strip all the pears off one side of the tree in the 
Spring, which I did, got about 8 inches of new growth on that side later that 
year, grafted them on to a couple rootstocks, and now have two new 10 foot 
trees.  He told me to keep all fruit off the tree until it was the size I 
wanted and then let it produce like it's parent.  The fruit is the old hard 
"round-top" pear that requires a few weeks in the garage after I pick it.  
The old tree went down in a storm four years ago.
Jim

-----Original Message-----
>From: david.maxwell@dal.ca
>Sent: Mar 6, 2011 2:02 PM
>To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
>Subject: [NAFEX] No new growth
>
>I have been cutting scions for people who have requested grafting material, 
>and have 
>become aware of a phenomenon which I did not appreciate until now.  I have a 
>number of 
>different varieties, grafted to Ottawa-3 rootstocks, most in 2003. Most of 
>them are around 8 
>ft. high; some are as much as 12 ft.  Now, I have two observations, probably 
>linked, (but you 
>tell me!)  1) Trees of Gideon, Lady (pomme d'Api), and a variety collected 
>from the front yard 
>of a lady called Sandra, (and hence called "Sandra's Red") have all 
>virtually ceased making 
>any vegetative growth.  There are masses of fruit spurs, but virtually 
>nothing which I could cut 
>for grafting.  (One of my fellow afficionados rather rudely says it is 
>because I "don't fertilize 
>them", meaning chemical fertilizers. [I do use compost and heavy mulch].)  
>But other trees of 
>different varieties next to them have put on growth ranging anywhere from 6 
>to 18 inches, 
>suggesting to me that it has more to do with the variety than the growing 
>conditions.  2) I 
>have 4 trees of St. Cecilia, ostensibly all on O-3.  But one of them has 
>grown to twice the size 
>of the other 3.  (They are all side-by-side)  I suspect that the rootstock 
>of this one was not in 
>fact O-3.  Of the 4 trees, the 3 smaller ones have very little new growth, 
>(maybe 3-4"), but the 
>big one is covered in masses of vegetative growth, easily 18" or more,  all 
>over and in all 
>directions.  (I spent half an hour pruning out all the extra growth, and 
>ended up with a whole 
>bag full of scion wood).  My interpretation is that the dwarfing effect of 
>the rootstock is 
>promoting fruit spur development and suppressing vegetative growth.  Is this 
>reasonable?  If I 
>want to get propagating material, what can I do to trigger new growth? And, 
>finally, the 
>Gideon *never* put out much lateral growth, and I have ended up with a 12 
>ft. high trunk, 
>covered in fruit spurs all the way up the trunk, and 2 spindly branches near 
>the bottom.  Is 
>there any way to provoke it into making some branches now?  (I can't even 
>take budwood 
>from higher up and bud it into the trunk to try to develop new branches, 
>because there is no 
>vegetative growth to bud from...)