apple and/or pear recommendations

I want to plant 3 fruit trees, either apple or pear, that will bear fruit but not require spraying. Am I looking for the impossible? Our arborist suggested dwarf pears, but no particular variety. In terms of flavor, I like Concord and Seckel. Also, I need them to be hardy in central OH and am looking for a nursery in a northern zone.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated!

Apples have a lot of pests, while there have been a few advertised over the years as spray free, I have never found it to be true. Pears on the other hand, are pretty pest free, the major problem being fire blight. Most dependable for me me has been the ancient Kieffer, but most of the fireblight resistant cultivars do well.

I agree w/ Farmerdill about the apples - If you don't spray, you get too much damage from the apple maggots etc. to harvest much useable fruit. I have 4 trees and 2 are coming down because they are too big to conveniently spray, advertised as "dwarf" they grew to be 15 feet tall anyway. The mini-dwarfs top out at around 6-8 feet and don't take as much maintenance. Also, my opinion is that the "organic" controls are just that. They may lessen the number of pests, but there are still worms in some of the apples. Ick.

It must have something to do with zone. The only 'spray' that we use on our apples here is iron chelates, because we have an alkaline soil so the trees can't get enough iron on their own. And that could potentially be applied in other ways. But we don't have to use any pesticides or fungicides or anything. Of course, our apples are not really commercial varieties. They produce crisp tasty apples (but small in comparison to what you'd get in a store). We grow Adanac and SK Prairie Sun. Adanac has red fruit about the size of a crabapple (which we also grow). SK Prairie Sun has yellow fruit slightly smaller than a typical McIntosh apple. I don't know if those would grow in your zone or not - they'd certainly be hardy enough, but they might find Ohio too warm.

Pears seem to be a bit more touchy here. We used to have a pear tree years ago that we lost to fire blight. I planted another one of a different variety (Early Gold) this summer and I'm hoping that it won't meet the same fate. Again, this particular variety - a descendent of the Ure pear - is supposed to be hardy to zone 2 or 3. So it would likely grow in Ohio, as long as it isn't too warm there.


This message was edited Oct 18, 2005 1:59 AM

Seckel is hardy. We had one years ago when I was a kid...Miller's Nursery.
Honeysweet was very early bearing for me.....and self pollinating......Stark Bros.
Moonglow is supposed to be good....Miller's Nursery

I've been growing the Miller Nursery apple called McFree. One of those "less spray" type. It took me years to realize that that was bunk. It's a great apple with good keeping qualities and a wonderful flavor but it must be sprayed like any other or forget it. My 15 year old tree gives me 100 pounds or more per season.
I have a young dwarf Sekel pear that grows only an inch per year and has not born fruit in 2 years. ? ? ? A neighbor has the same tree with the same problems.
Andy P

I wonder if Seckel would be better with a larger root stock...not dwarf.

Apples that are more disease free still can be attacked by insects.