North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Jim Freeman" <jf@gctruck.com>]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the recommendation. Do you have a good source for Quince C
rootstock or pear trees grafted on them? I find I have very little time
to graft my own.

Thanks!
Jim
-----Original Message-----
Message: 7
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:16:10 -0700
From: "Bob Hartman" <hartmansfruit@msn.com>

Hi Jim,

I have grown the Warren pear on OHXF333 and it never even bloomed when
it 
was 4 or 5 years old and it was a huge tree.  Then I grafted it onto
Quince 
C which is one of the smallest growing rootstock for European pears and
it 
has been blooming and fruiting profusely at 3 and 4 years of age.  If
you 
can grow pears on quince at your location you might give that a try.

Bob
Western Washington

-----Original Message----- 
From: Jim Freeman
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 8:26 AM
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [NAFEX] Pears & Apples

Funny you mentioned pears, as I was tying limbs on my home trees this
weekend. I noticed on the ones I tied down last year that 45 degrees
does not seem to be flat enough for the best bloom production. The limbs
that finished around 90 degrees seemed to have a lot more blooms than
the others. The crotch angle does not seem to matter as much as the main
body of the limb. Most of my pears are in their fifth leaf, so it seems
to me they should all be producing decent amounts of fruit. The only
ones to have produced more that 1-2 pears are the Orients. They have
produced reliable & large crops since they were in their 3rd leaf. Our
Maxine & Moonglow had a few blooms last year but only averaged 1 fruit
per tree while Orient averaged 3 bushels. Luckily, all three have lots
of blooms this year, so I am less worried about knocking the odd bloom
off.

My Warren pears finally have a few blossoms this year and I am looking
forward to getting a few pears from them. Funny, but the smaller one has
10x the blooms of my larger more beautiful specimen. Wonder why this
happened? They are side by side in the same orchard with identical
conditions. The smaller one nearly died the year it was planted
(2006)due to some problem at the graft that caused 80% of the tree to
die. I cut away all the dead wood and it has slowly grown into a decent
looking tree that is half the size of my other Warren. It would be
really funny if my smallest runt produces the most fruit.