they should grow and produce in your area, considering both soil and weather. In terms of weather, I can tell you that medlars must be quite cold-hardy; my two medlars REFUSED to lose their leaves, my smaller one did first, and only just a few days ago did the taller one lose all its leaves - there's actually still one clinging on. And we've had the ground COVERED with ice here - we've repeatedly had weather around 30 degrees and below, at least twice where it went into the teens. from what I've read, medlar trees seem to be relatively tough trees with few if any pest/disease problems - though they are susceptible to fireblight. I just planted my two this summer and I haven't seen any problems yet. Don't use a dwarfing rootstock or the tree will never grow bigger than a shrub - the tree just refuses to grow big. Use pear as a rootstock for your heavy soil - I've got pear seeds stratifying in the fridge right now to make rootstocks to make more trees. Planting different varieties will NOT help increase fruit yield. Every single flower will become a fruit, and the tree even has a strong tendency for parthenocarpy if there's no pollination - there is indeed a seedless variety. You could plant your trees on a little mound like I did for drainage, so even if your entire property flood, there will be at least a FEW roots in the mound that will survive. The tree doesn't bear fruit to heavily. And you need to let the fruit "blet" before eating it. Just leave it sitting indoors for a week or two until they become dark and wrinkly. For eating, peel some of the skin and suck the flesh out, spitting out the seeds. The taste is OK, not amazing, but good. Not too sweet, not too sour. The fruits usually aren't very big, so go for a big fruited variety like breda giant. There is apparently a variety called "large russian" that has fruits the size of a tangerine (very big for a medlar), and user idogcow has one - I still haven't contacted him yet.

It started out as just a few leaves, but now most of them are like this. I'm not exactly sure, but I do think that it started on the outer edges of the leaves and has worked inward. I have not sprayed the trees with anything and they did not look like this when I bought them. It's possible that I've overfertilized... Really, with me, any mistake is possible.

Hi Journalist- I think we still need to figure out what's going wrong with the bark on your apple tree. Any chance you can post a pic? (I post mine to another site like photobucket or webshots and then just paste the html code that they give you in these posts). Or do a Google Image search for "apple canker" and see if it fits. As for spraying everything with Immunox... You need to be a bit careful when spraying fungicides. You really want to follow the instructions on the label. If the label doesn't specifically say that it's ok to spray certain things, then you should not spray. If you spray your apple with Immunox, I don't think it will matter that there is quite a bit of other rust-infected things near by. For example, across the street from me, my neighbor has 2 neglected apple trees with plenty of rust, yet I got complete control on my property. Spraying at the right time isn't trivial though, so make sure to do lots of research now... when spring comes, you won't have time to figure it all out. Good luck, -Glenn

I did a google search on Black Knot and Prunus Virginiana and you are right! Thank you so much! I see a site mentions that you have to remove all infected branches and sterilize the equipment every time you cut off a branch. Does that sound right? Hilde