Making your own trees................

[enjoy the ride]

The upward fast growing shoots are called watersprouts and most books recommend pruning them off.
Your zone is a borderline one for pears but lots of apples can take that kind of cold. That may be why no pear blossoms.
The apples may just need a little more time as standard sized trees take more time to produce than the dwarf apple will.
If you want pears, I would check around with your local gardening center to see if they have one that is more cold tolerant than any I know about in my zone 7 area.
The only thing I can think to do with the pear, is to plant it in a spot where the sun doesn't fully warm it til later in spring- if you can delay the breaking of dormancy by a bit, you might succeed in getting the blossoming after the last killing frost.
I do that with some of my trees because of the amount of rain here in the spring. I planted them where they are pretty much in shade in most of the winter. Hoping that when the sun finally reaches them, it will have delayed bloom until there is less rain to wash off the blossoms.
Everywhere has it's problems. In checking for the hardiness of pears, I found that Bartlett is susceptible to fireblight which is a real possiblity for me- oh well, should have thought of that before I bought it.

 

[sylvie]

My MIL has an antique variety of apple that her father planted in the 30's or 40's. It is called Wagner and makes better pies than anything I have bought on the market. These trees are in such a state of decline that I am amazed that they produce large crops each year.

I want to graft them and not sure what rootstock to use. We have a zillion varieties of crabapples growing naturally in the area and wonder if they would make a good rootstock for a standard size apple?
I know the seeds won't grow true so grafting is my only option.

Our pear's blossoms sometimes get hit by a late frost and there's no pears that year. Don't pears produce the fruit producing blossoms on the last years growth and pruning each year would be cutting off the branches that may have borne fruit? I could be wrong. I rarely prune my pears and aside of the aforementioned frost above I get large crops.

 

[freemotion]

I haven't gotten so much as a hint of a bud, nevermind a blossom, on my pear tree. It'll be 7 years this spring.

 

[enjoy the ride]

I think pears blossom on the same spur year after year. I think apples do too but something tickles at the back of my mind that some varieties do go on newer spurs but I can't remember if that is true or not.

Freemotion- Do you have fruiting spurs? If so, I still would suspect that it might be frost kill. But you could try scoring the bark like I did on that asian pear- I had no blossoms on it til I did that. Sort of a do or die action- produce or firewood.......... It should have done something by 7 years old if it was a dwarf.

Can't think of anything else- if you score the bark, it shouldn't kill the tree as long as you don't girdle it.

Sylvie- I have never used a crab apple as rootstock so I can't tell you- but you could always try it- free is free and you'll only have invested a little time. I would think most crab apples would have a dwarfing effect. But it should be pretty easy to find an apple to graft it on to. Lots of grafted tree have suckers at the base.

 

[nightshade]

they claim that we are either 4 or 5 here but I don't believe it either. I have gotten so I only buy things that are a hardiness zone 4 or 3 so they are a little hardier just in case.

 

[TanksHill]

Very informative thread. Thanks for sharing. g

 

[freemotion]

I think pears blossom on the same spur year after year. I think apples do too but something tickles at the back of my mind that some varieties do go on newer spurs but I can't remember if that is true or not.

Freemotion- Do you have fruiting spurs? If so, I still would suspect that it might be frost kill. But you could try scoring the bark like I did on that asian pear- I had no blossoms on it til I did that. Sort of a do or die action- produce or firewood.......... It should have done something by 7 years old if it was a dwarf.

Can't think of anything else- if you score the bark, it shouldn't kill the tree as long as you don't girdle it.

Sylvie- I have never used a crab apple as rootstock so I can't tell you- but you could always try it- free is free and you'll only have invested a little time. I would think most crab apples would have a dwarfing effect. But it should be pretty easy to find an apple to graft it on to. Lots of grafted tree have suckers at the base.

Waddaya mean by score the bark? And when?

 

[Beekissed]

It sort of "shocks" the tree, but not enough to kill it. My mom and I found out about this by accident....I slid down over her embankment with a big Chevy Suburban one day and bent her apple sapling almost compeletly over and scuffed up the bark~big time!

She put a glob of Bag Balm on it and wrapped it with a sheet. That is her biggest and best apple tree now and bears more fruit than all the others, which bear practically nothing.

 

[enjoy the ride]

I only did this once but I did what I read in a book and it worked-

I put three slashes through the cambrian layer (Hope I spelled that right) one under the other- like /
/ /

The slashes were about 1/2 inch wide and one third of the circumference of the trunk. I just took a sharp knife, made the slashes through the outer and green under part of the bark and peeled it off. I did it in the summer (?) and got blossoms and fruit set I think the next year. It was so long ago I can't remember exactly when I did it. I just remember being amazed it worked so well.

edit- opps the slashes went out of line when I posted- but they were directly under each other on the trunk.

 

[freemotion]

Oh! Now that you say that, the one time we got a few apples was the summer after the winter that the goats got out and stripped the bark, almost girdling the tree! (I was very sick with the flu and didn't latch the gate fully....they always know!)

That was a bit severe, though. Maybe I'll get brave when I go prune all those water sprouts off and make a few slashes. Must be like cutting the roots on 3 out of 4 sides of a tomato plant to get the tomatos to ripen up in a hurry. Scares 'em silly!