barnetmill

One downside to the pome fruits is that most of them are susceptible to fireblight and I am always afraid I will get hit on my loquats and some other pome fruits. I select my pears for those that are resistant. I strongly recommend Southern Bartlett and Olton Broussard as good pears for standing up to fireblight. If I do not select for resistance, fireblight will do that for me. I have one hosui and a Chinese pear that do not withstand it very well. There is now a cross between Tenns and Hosui, Tennosui, that is said to be very resistant and I did manage to do 4 grafts that worked for it. Both it and Olton Broussard will store for a couple of months when refrigerated. My other pears either do not catch FB or if they do they manage to recover. I have a keiffer that has recovered twice. I find that some apple varieties just get sick of something else and die with tropic sweet being the worst of them. I was informed by Travis Callahan of NAFEX and SFF that our local swamp cedar trees are a host for rust and I now am cutting down those trees when ever I find them on my place. I am now trying out Mayhaws at the urging of Travis. Loquats and pears seem to be the easiest to grow. The loquat leaves stayed green this year in the face of ice storms and 18 F temperature which is cold for us in NWFL. There are even some with fruit that made through the winter. With one exception all of my loquat trees are seedlings and I need to obtain some cultivars to allow grafting. A friend this year give me more seedlings than I know what to do with. I will put them in a raised bed to mature a little and then plant them. I just need to clear some forest land to make space. I do like loquat fruit. Many people locally grow them as ornamental trees and not so much for their fruit.
I also did five grafts of quince to BA 29 Quince rootstock and they seem to be working. Quince fruit fetch a higher price when sold than do pears. I gave a Belgium colleague a few quince off of my single tree and he wants a dwarf quince tree. I will give one of the grafted trees this Saturday for his small yard to go with the dwarfed Orient and Olton Broussard grafted pear tree I did for him a year or so ago.