John, somewhere you recommended grafting onto Douglas Hawthorn. I have a patch of them, mostly falling over, at the edge of my property near a small ravine. After I cleared out the blackberry thicket, I found some grafting size sprouts.
I added some Chinese Haw, which seems obvious. Based on your advice and reading around the internet, it looks like compatibility with other pommes is variable but in some cases good, including some pears. I can add Asian or Euro pears. Have not seen anything about apple compatibility but if I find some crab apple that might be fun too.
I think I will get out and graft on some of my Asian pears and maybe some Bartlett. No harm trying and I have a thing for grafting at the moment.
Those Hawthorns are a mess. Most of them are be over the hill. The plan is to remove the fallen ones and plant something better to hold soil. But there are lots of random sprouts for experimental grafting. Bees like the hawthorns but they would like other pomme flowers too.
Hi Daniel,
Yes, they take to Euro pears very well.
Apples are a mixed bag.
I get the rootstock for free, so why not?
John S
PDX OR
Free is good 🙂
The buds are swelling now on the Chinese Haw that I grafted onto the hawthorns. One of the Asian pears also has swelling buds. So far, so good.
That's interesting, Rooney. So far my grafts look OK but it's still early. The flower buds on the Chinese Haw scions are swelling same as the ones on the Chinese Haw tree itself. The Asian pear scions also have swelling buds. So far, so good.
This is an update on using Douglas Hawthorn as rootstock.
I grafted quite a few scions onto my Hawthorn trees. I used the same whip-and-tongue method that worked for me for apples, pears, quince, persimmon, plums. For scion, I used Chojuro, Shinseiki, Hosui Asian pears, Chinese Haw, and a quince, I forgot which one.
The result: Not a single one took. This year I also grafted 6 Asian pear scion onto my Asian pears, many apples, 4 Euro pear scion onto Euro pears, and 6 plums. Every one took. I had a few others that did not take, but I don't think the Hawthorn failure was my technique, since so many others took.
Hopefully this update is helpful to someone. It is possible that I mis-identified the Douglas hawthorn, or maybe it's not useful as a rootstock for the varieties that I attempted.
I have used many kinds of hawthorn as rootstock. I'm sure I used it successfully because I don't have any continuing to grow as Douglas hawthorn. It's all pears now. I know that I have also used Washington hawthorn and Chinese hawthorn as well. I am not Joe stud grafter so my rates might not be as high as some others, but I haven't noticed a difference among the hawthorns. However, I will say that I am focusing on quince as the rootstock because I have so much of it and it does seem to have a higher take with the pears than the hawthorn.
John S
PDX OR
I have an update on this post. I wanted to add this update, because my tree identification was incorrect.
The trees that were identified to me as Hawthorn, were not Hawthorn. They were Cascara Buckthorn - Rhamnus purshiana. No wonder the grafts didn't take.
Before this, I had never seen Douglas Hawthorn or Cascara Buckthorn. Now I know!
Sorry for the incorrect information.