Grafting ?

[Gravel Road]

Re reading this thread as my first grafting approaches. Why do you say pear is tough to graft?

Don't over think it. If it fails, your root stock probably won't die and you can try next year. Last year was the first time attempting grafting Shinseiki and Bartlett onto some wild callery pears, and had a nearly 100% success rate.

 

[chickenlittle]

My experience with bench grafting pears has been pretty poor. Lost quite a few with the rootstock dieing in a wet spring and summer. Much better when I planted the rootstock and waited until the next spring to graft. Apples have been easier to bench graft.

 

[cavey]

My experience with bench grafting pears has been pretty poor. Lost quite a few with the rootstock dieing in a wet spring and summer. Much better when I planted the rootstock and waited until the next spring to graft. Apples have been easier to bench graft.

My pain and experience as well, took a complete spanking on 50 bench grafted pears last year as well, horrible spring - horrible experience pretty much a complete failure - never had that issue with apples.

 

[greyphase]

My experience with pears mirrors chickenlittle's. I now let pear rootstock grow for a year before grafting to it and have much better success.

 

[Chainsaw]

My pain and experience as well, took a complete spanking on 50 bench grafted pears last year as well, horrible spring - horrible experience pretty much a complete failure - never had that issue with apples.

I have had good experiences with apples and pears and I have had bad experiences with apples and pears sometimes everything went perfect and sometimes it doesn’t doesn’t get so perfect just keep on swinging test test and test and test it isn’t that easy but it isn’t that hard either. I wish I had started learning the grafting experience in a youngAt a younger life so that I could’ve had more trees planted in in later winter time frames

 

[williams111]

I had decent success in 2019 and 2020 grafting both apples/pears. I would say 60-75% success. Last year I showed a couple buddies how to do it, after a few too many beers their grafts began looking rough. I was certain hardly any of them would make it. Last year I purchased some bulk paraffin wax and a mug warmer to melt the wax in a tall glass. After grafting and wrapping the grafts with parafilm I dipped the entire scion and graft into the melted wax. This seemed to be a game changer for me, I would say 90% success on my grafts and over half of my buddies grafts even took. I will be doing this every year now. This may be something for you to consider.