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Should be alright. Some pear varieties show incompatibility with Bradford and/or Callery pears as a root stock. I guess I am saying that I wouldnt go hog wild until I found a reliable source of info or you have proven it to yourself.
This is a seckel pear I grafted to a seedling from a Bradford pear I grew in my garden last year. I got the idea from the guy that runs Ames orchard near Fayetteville. He doesn't list kieffer, but grows all his pears on pyrus calleryana. I also have a Warren growing on one.
This is a seckel pear I grafted to a seedling from a Bradford pear I grew in my garden last year. I got the idea from the guy that runs Ames orchard near Fayetteville. He doesn't list kieffer, but grows all his pears on pyrus calleryana. I also have a Warren growing on one. View attachment 8949
This is a seckel pear I grafted to a seedling from a Bradford pear I grew in my garden last year. I got the idea from the guy that runs Ames orchard near Fayetteville. He doesn't list kieffer, but grows all his pears on pyrus calleryana. I also have a Warren growing on one. View attachment 8949
They're both growing nicely so far, the tallest around 6' and that's with me cutting them back considerably when I moved them to the farm last year.
I also have top worked a few wild pears on the farm with useful varieties. One tree has about 10 different types on it now, Asian and European.
Around here Bradford/Calloway are a very invasive so bad a species that the state has even banned selling or propagating. I would graft Bradford with a good dose of Crossbow and use some other pear variety for the project. They are like autumn olive, honeysuckle, multiflora rose or similar. Not worth the risk of suckers ever seeding or a neglected tree getting out of hand. Besides the bad habits of the Bradford why would you choose to graft to a pear tree with such weak structure when they are so many good pear varieties that have awesome strong trunks and aren't an ecological threat?
I've never noticed any here suckering, but after reading online about them, don't doubt they do at least in certain situations.
I just checked and Guy still sells his on wild rootstock, but will graft to ohxf97 if requested.
On my multiple variety tree, it was a 10' or so volunteer to start with. Chuck wanted to try several Perry pear varieties and since it's at the back of the farm I added them to it as a test then I've been changing all the other branches over to useful types.
I'm quite positive it will split down the middle in a storm one day, but I hope not before I can see how the Perry pears hold up to our fireblight pressure.
I did a drive down I-75 from Vandalia to Cincinnati, and there were thousands of Callery pears. I don't think a few more will make a difference, and if I convert them to European tops, they won't even really be Callery pears anymore. And maybe if I'm successful I can get per,ission from the nearby metropark to convert trees on their property.