In the spring of 2012, I attempted to graft a Pear scion onto my apple tree using Winter Banana Apple as an inter stem. (All of he grafting i do is "Whip and Tongue" grafts wrapped in grafting tape. I then coat the wrapped union with grafting wax) The parent branch was a Winesap Apple branch with a grafted Winter Banana Apple scion from a few years before. (I actually have two of these paired branches.) I then attempted to graft two "Kieffer" Pear scions onto my two Winter Banana Apple inter stems. The "Kieffer" Pear scions started to grow, but died a few weeks later. This spring (2014) I attempted to graft this Apple / Pear union again using the same Winter Banana Apple inter stems. I had just enough branch on my Winter Banana branches to try this experiment one more time. This time around, I used "Sunrise Pear" scionwood. The grafting was a screaming success! (I had enough "Sunrise Pear" scionwood to graft two branches onto my apple tree, and two more onto an ornamental pear. All four pear grafts were a success!) I have no idea why this experiment failed in 2012 and was a success in 2014. I do not know if it had to do with the pear variety used, or if it had to do with environmental circumstances. I will re-post in 2015 with an update. There are a few different treads on this subject so I will be re-posting on those threats also. Below are pictures taken on 07/27/2014.

Hi Milehigh- good for you on your pear setting fruit. I have a big cm problem on my apple, and my neighbor's pear is wormy with cm every year, but so far my little pear has shown no inclination. I'll put a cm trap in it this week, and if/when I see more than a couple of the little buggers I'll get ready to spray with spinosad at the same time I do my apple- just a couple or three days after I spot the moths, and a week later. I really want to be thorough with the first generation, as knocking it down goes a long way to reducing the succeeding generations (we can have up to four per year.) There are stronger and better choices than spinosad, but they aren't very good for me in my situation, and the spinosad seems to be gaining on it. As a kind of "PS" I'll mention that pear will sometimes form fruit quite nicely, and then drop all of it that's not pollinated, which happened to me last year and may well again this year. Good luck, M

My Kieffer bloomed the second yr after planting and every yr thereafter...in Febr/March and got froze out in March or April. This yr after the third such freeze out in three yrs, the tree got whacked. It wasn't the only one. Moonglow, Orient, and Ayers are gone for the same behavior. At least they all bloomed at a young age. Warren was much slower to bloom and I lost patience with it also. Still have Concorde, Bosc, Comice, Bartlett, Seckel, Olympic, and a couple Asian pears. They mostly bloom later but all were froze out this yr. Maybe they'll last another couple yrs. Too little space and too many things to try. I don't like most pears that much anyhow, Bosc and Comice being two exceptions. The Fruitnut

ladykitsu: I very much doubt that fireblight had anything to do with the problems of your newly planted pear trees. Fireblight attacks actively growing trees, and yours, as you describe them, have never begun to grow. Something else is causing your problems; perhaps bad nursery stock, but more likely something you are doing at planting time, perhaps allowing the roots to dry out, overwatering after planting, or God knows what. If you decide to try again, order in bareroot nursery stock from a good nursery, and plant very early; as soon as you can work in the soil without your fingers freezing. A May-planted tree that has not leafed out by August is dead for practical purposes. When putting in little trees, loosen the soil around the planting hole well, but do not add any fertilizers or other soil amendments in the planting hole. Do not overwater. And please do not try any more 4-in-1 or 3-in-1 trees until you have mastered planting the 1-in-1. You would be better off with two trees of complementary varieties than any of the multi-grafted trees. Spraying your little trees will have no effect at all on fireblight. You don't say what spray material you are using (which you should helpfully specify), but there is no spray chemical in this world that will stop an active fireblight infection once it is underway. I mention this not because I think you have fireblight, but for your future reference. If you have been spraying the trees with such frequency using a dormant spray such as oil or copper, you may have killed the trees with the spraying itself. For lurquizo: While I respect (in a way) your aversion to the use of "poisons" on your fruit trees, I ask you this question: If you had a bad case of strep throat and the doctor prescribed an antibiotic, would you take it? Fruit trees occasionally need the interventions of modern science and technology to maintain their health and productivity, and if you consistently decline to take advantage of them you will end up with dead trees. Fireblight is a bacterial disease, easy to spot on pear trees by the blackened leaves and the shepherd's crook bend at the ends of dead shoots. It starts early, and, while heat and rainfall may favor its spread, you can have both heat and rain and still largely eliminate fireblight by using two sprays of agricultural streptomycin; one at full bloom, and another about a week later. Streptomycin is an antibiotic, not your usual chemical, that stops fireblight before it gets started. Like so many other fruit trees diseases, prevention is the key, since once a disease like this gets going it is impossible to cure. I don't know where you are located (you should say), but here in Northern Virginia we have more than a month of temperatures in the mid-90's and occasional thunderstorms. But I have no fireblight in my orchard of over 65 trees because I applied streptomycin twice; in late April and early May. Streptomycin has no effect whatsoever on honeybees (which I keep here) or other beneficial insects. General "trimming" of the trees in the hope of eliminating fireblight will not work. If fireblight does appear during the growing season, pruning must be prompt and targeted at the infected branches. When you cut through a branch, inspect the interior to see if the wood is completely healthy with no signs of interior blackening. Keep pruning down until you see no more suspicious color within the branches or twigs. Gardening is not so tough once you figure out and cooperate with nature's cycles, and are willing to use carefully targeted chemical interventions when that becomes neccessary. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA