Mespilus germanica
Medlar
At a glance
- Light
- Full sun
- Hardiness
- Hardy down to −25 °C
- Pruning
- Feb–Mar
- Harvest
- Oct–Nov
- Spacing
- 400 cm, rows 400 cm
- Water need
- Medium
- Origin
- Native to Germany
Photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Source
This description was machine-translated.
Description
The medlar (Mespilus germanica) is a nearly forgotten fruit tree with a picturesque growth habit and large white flowers in May. Its apple‑like fruits become soft and sweet‑spicy only after the first frost and a period of storage, this process is called "softening" or "softening after frost." A single plant is already productive, as the medlar is self‑fertile.
Care instructions
Plant the medlar in a sunny, sheltered spot in well‑drained soil, preferably in autumn (October, week 42). Harvest the fruits late, from late October to November, and store them cool until they soften and turn brown. Prune sparingly; the tree naturally develops its beautiful crown.
The care notes were machine-translated from German.
Garden year
HarvestOct–Nov
Soil & site
Soil pH
Soil type
loamy, humus-rich, well-drained
Give the medlar a deep, fresh-to-moist loamy soil with good drainage. It does not tolerate waterlogging. It grows on almost all soils in the pH range of about 6 to just under 8 and copes well with calcareous soil; only at a very high pH (pure limestone or gravelly soil) can chlorosis occur. On sandy soil, a generous dose of compost at planting helps.
Feeding
Light feeder
Months
Mar, Apr, Jun
In spring (March/April), apply mature compost to the root zone and work it in shallowly; for young plants you can mix in horn shavings as a slow-release organic fertiliser. A second light dose of compost in early summer is possible, but not necessary. Established trees usually manage with the spring dose.
Pruning
Prune the medlar in late winter (February to March, approx. weeks 6 to 13) while dormant, before bud break, with only a gentle maintenance prune: take out dead, diseased and inward-growing wood. Go sparingly, because the flowers sit at the tips of the short shoots, and too hard a cut-back costs you the harvest the following year.
Overwintering
Once mature, the medlar is fully hardy and needs no protection. Only young trees in the first two or three years after planting you cover over the root zone with leaves or brushwood and wrap the trunk in hessian against frost drought and frost cracks; container plants you place somewhere sheltered and wrap the pot in horticultural fleece.
Propagation
Methods
- Grafting
- Cuttings
- Layering
- From seed
Grafting (main method for plants true to the cultivar): In winter, cut mature scions and store them cool and moist until grafting in March/April. Suitable rootstocks are quince (more compact, widely used, also used for pear), hawthorn (long-lived, native across Europe, but watch for suckers) or pear rootstock. With hawthorn you should graft as low as possible so that fewer suckers sprout. Because medlar is poor at growing over larger wounds, prefer techniques with small wounds: in summer (August) budding or chip budding, in spring whip-and-tongue grafting or side-veneer grafting. Bind the graft union airtight and protect it from drying out.
Cuttings (difficult, but possible): In early summer, take semi-ripe shoots about 10 to 15 cm long. Remove the lower leaves, leave one pair of leaves at the top, and insert the cuttings, cut at a slant, in seed compost or a sand-and-soil mix. Keep the substrate evenly moist and put the cuttings somewhere bright but out of direct sun. Rooting takes several weeks and, from experience, works only with a low success rate, so expect losses.
Layering: In autumn or spring, bend a young, flexible shoot down to the ground, wound it slightly at the bend and cover that section with soil. Weigh it down with a stone. After about two growing seasons (around 18 months) it is usually well rooted and can be separated from the mother shrub and transplanted.
Sowing (only for rootstocks, very slow): Take the stones from ripe, soft (bletted) fruit in autumn. The seeds have a very hard, impermeable coat and often germinate only after two winters. Stratify them cold for several months (1 to 5 °C, e.g. in the fridge in moist sand). Some stones germinate only after a second cold spell, so do not give up on them too soon. Tip: if you harvest the stones green (ripe, but before the coat has dried out) and sow them immediately in a cold frame, this shortens the germination time. Sowing is unsuitable for preserving a cultivar, as the offspring are genetically variable.
Companion planting
Companion planting is partly traditional gardening lore. Where the reason is known, it is given.
Some of these explanations were machine-translated.
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