Grafting pears

So, grafting pears. That's what I did today, after replacing a headlight bulb in my PT Cruiser and getting it inspected. Which is neither here nor there--I just wanted you folks to know I've had a productive day.

I have two 7-year-old pear trees in my back yard, planted back the first January after we moved to New Braunfels. One is a moonglow type, which I originally got because it is reputed to be a good pollinator with good, dessert-quality fruit. The other is a Warren type, which I got because of its reputation as producing the highest-quality eating pears. I love fresh pears, so I hunted high and low for a Warren, choosing it over an Ayers pear, which is regarded as the second-best eating pear. Well, that turned out to be a mistake on my part. These past two years my moonglow has flowered, but the Warren has not. Since pears are not self-fertile, I've had no pears, even though the moonglow is ready and willing. This past spring, I gathered some branches from flowering pears here and there and tried a little hand pollination with the moonglow, and was rewarded with half a dozen fat, delicious pears in late summer. They are irregular, unattractive things, but the flavor and smooth flesh is far superior to anything in the grocery store. Which led me to wonder: What the heck is up with the Warren?

A little (well, a lot) additional research revealed some disappointing facts. The Warren, while recommended for my area and praised for its high quality fruit, is a late bloomer. Literally. Whereas the moonglow will flower at 5 years, the Warren takes 10, 12 or even longer before it will flower and set fruit. Well, crap. What's worse, I soon discovered, is that the Warren's flowers do not produce pollen. That's right, it's sterile. So even if it starts flowering this spring, the moonglow still won't produce any fruit. I'd initially made my choices by following the recommendations of the Texas A&M horticulture website--if the Aggies don't know plants, who does, right? But I dearly wish they'd have included that extra bit of information about the Warren, as it'd have saved me a bunch of hassle.

Down the road a ways is an elderly lady who has two pear trees in her yard (well, one's in her yard--the other straddles the property line and might belong to a neighbor). The big one in her yard produced many round, yellow pears last fall that had a crisp texture and a mild, apple-like flavor. So many pears were dropping and rotting on the ground that one day I stopped and asked if I could pick some. She told me to take all I wanted. Although she didn't know what kind of pear tree it was, I'm thinking it's a Garber type. The other, on the property line, is much older and gnarled, with a large part of its original trunk dead and cut away. Although I didn't sample any of these pears before, I'll wager it's a Kieffer pear, normally used for baking because of its toughness. I asked the lady if I could take some cuttings in the winter, to try and graft on my trees at home. Again, she said take as many as I wanted. So today, on my way home from getting the car inspected, I stopped and took several cuttings from each tree.

The reason for grafting the different pear types onto my tree is to produce an array of blooms on each which will ensure pollination every spring, regardless of whether the Warren ever blooms or not. I took the scion branches and, using a wedge graft technique, forced them into slots I'd cut into the stock branches and lining up the cambium layers (the living, growing outer layer of the wood). Then, using rubber electrician tape, I wrapped the graft very tightly, forcing the wedged pieces of branch to press into each other very tightly. Ideally, the tree will pass nutrients up into the scion and keep it alive, while the wound of the graft heals and the two branches grow together into one. If the graft takes, in a year or so the scion branch will start flowering on its own and eventually producing fruit as well. I also grafted several branches from the Warren onto the moonglow as well, reasoning that because the moonglow is already mature and fruiting, it might force the grafted Warren branches into fruiting as well. Or not. I've never tried grafting trees before, so I have no idea if they will take, or how long before I'll be able to tell one way or another. But just in case, I grafted a like number of branches--including several pruned from the moonglow--onto the Warren, so to increase the chances that something, anything, will pollinate my pears if the opportunity arises.

I'm still keeping an eye out for flowering pear trees this spring, though. Just in case.

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