Apple from Seed - Landrace

Adaptation Projects
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I live in a temperate climate, so no burr knots for me. In addition, having to select for burr knots is an additional selection criterium which makes it even less likely to find an apple fitting all the criteria. The other con is that you can select the rootstock for the size of tree you want, if you select for burr knots you may later have to select for the size of tree you’d want.

Regarding your comment on grafting, just saw this video on chip bud grafting, I will try this on grafts that failed, so I don’t lose a year on the tree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niOQaNZKcPk

Maarten

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Yeah, it’s important to not have too many “must have these in order to stay!” criteria.

With all species I grow, I only have two definite musts: 1) The ability to thrive in my climate without requiring a whole lot of care, and 2) Deliciousness.

I have a third criterion that is an almost as important to me: thornlessness. I am willing to allow some wiggle room there, though. For instance, most of my tasty summer squashes have thorns that I’m hoping to eventually have enough diversity to select out. There are also some species I really want that almost always have thorns, so I’m grudgingly willing to settle for the tastiest cultivars that are closest to thornless, such as Darrow che and Captivator gooseberry.

Since apples don’t have thorns (HURRAY!), that third one is already met, so all I need to worry about is climate suitability and deliciousness.

I often have other “it would be nice” things, and being able to root stuff easily from cuttings is one. I won’t select out anything delicious and climate suitable that lacks bonus traits, but I will probably preferentially plant seeds from anything that does.

As for burr knot itself, that seems like a promising lead towards a trait I like the idea of, but it’s not so important to me that I would plant cuttings from a tree I’m not interested in eating the fruit from. For instance, common rootstock varieties . . . :laughing:

Good point. Chip bud grafting is something I should try. I haven’t tried that yet, and it may very well be easier to keep a chip bud graft moist enough to take than a whole scion. Plus, I would get a lot more opportunities for a graft to work from the same cutting.

And finally, now that I think about it, that would probably be fully compatible with still planting the scion in the ground to see if it can root . . . (hopeful grin). If a cutting has six buds, I could easily remove three to bud graft, and still have enough left on the cutting to plant it in the ground to see if it would root.

Great point! Thank you for raising that as an idea! :smiley:

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Is this what y’all are referring to as burr knots?

Also what does a temperature climate have to do with them?

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By the way, what you mean when you say, “I live in a temperate climate, so no burr knots for me”? From what I understand, burr knot is common in zones 3 through 9, it just only occurs on cultivars that are susceptible to it.

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Wow, I don’t know for sure, but those sure do look like aerial roots!

Here’s a page on burr knots in apples:

Speaking of which, Steven Edholm has mentioned that you plant a grafted tree so deep that the graft union is well below the soil line, something “terrible” will happen – the grafted variety will grow its own roots! And then the rootstock will eventually die off once the grafted part no longer needs it because it has roots of its own. The current prevailing belief is that that’s terrible because rootstocks have advantages.

(But, see, they also have disadvantages.)

He recommended doing that on purpose if you want to get an apple tree on its own roots and it’s tough to root from cuttings.

(Steeples fingers and cackles.)

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I didn’t see any mention of nitrogen fixation in the article there, which seems like the most likely reason to have roots in the air, like in nitrogen fixing corn.

The only tree of mine that has air roots has outgrown all of the other trees. I would be surprised if that was a coincidence.

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Was the area around the trunk recently cleared of those grasses & other plants growing nearby?

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Emily,

“I live in a temperate climate, so no burr knots for me” I was referring to burr knots being more susceptible to disease, I had a lot of fireblight this year, so disease resistance is a big criterium for me.

Maarten

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I had one of those clear plastic tree protectors on it that I took off somewhat recently. The frost killed the grass down.

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Seems like that may have created good conditions for promoting these roots. Being in Louisiana you’ve already got humidity, the dichondra growing at the base would also indicate a wetter area.
That plastic and the surrounding vegetation would have held more moisture and also shaded the area.
I would guess that is what led to the aerial rooting and they most likely are not nitrogen fixing, but that would be very cool if they were.

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Had to look up dichondra. We’ve had a lot of rain the last couple days. It’s pretty wet here.

It’s possible the plastic caused the air roots, that crossed my mind, but it didn’t cause it on the other trees. And yet still the only tree that has them is the one that is growing the fastest.

Time might tell us. If the tree survives a couple of more years we’ll see how it looks.

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Rain water and condensation from evaporated surface moisture/dew can hold a lot of nitrogen and other nutrients. Even if they are not “nitrogen fixing” roots they were obviously advantageous or they would not have grown.
Being exposed I suspect they will likely dry up and eventually drop off.

Hopefully it is not a shock to the tree with the plastic removed. Fall/winter removal was probably ideal.
Watch out for sunscald next summer, or with any large temperature swings this winter.

I assume they all different varieties or at least from different sources?

I could see it being a very beneficial trait for easy propagation. Through mound layering as mentioned earlier, or air layering, or just ease of rooting cuttings.

Looking forward to future updates!

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Ohhh! That makes a lot more sense! Thank you for clarifying. :slight_smile: So you weren’t saying that you wouldn’t ever get them; you were saying that you wouldn’t ever want them. That makes perfect sense. Thank you!

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Thanks for the discussion, Emily, it helped me generate some new ideas regarding apple tree propagation.

I am planning to do the Akiva Silver method, but on some of the shoots already do a chip bud graft the first year (summer), so they (hopefully) go into dormancy as a grafted tree so the next year won’t waste resources on healing graft wounds and perhaps have better progress the second year than a shoot grafted later in the 25/26 winter?

Maarten

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I bought 6 apple trees from the same place. Whitetail hill chestnuts, called by them, non-typical apples. They’re all seed grown and by his explanation found growing at old abandoned homesteads. If nothing kills them I’m hoping two of them flower in 2026. Or if I’m lucky 3 of them. The other 3 are most likely culls.

I’ve also got some crab apple trees I planted the other day. Maybe they can hide in some Johnson grass so the deer won’t kill them. I’m done with that plastic tube junk.

The last trick up my sleeve is some open pollinated gold rush apple seeds from skillcult I hope to plant in the spring.

If this project fails then I’m quitting apples for good.

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That’s really cool, and that explains the genetic/phenotypic diversity.
I hope they do well for you!

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Thank you, too! You reminded me that I haven’t done chip bud grafting yet, and that seems like something that is well worth trying. It may very well work for me. I love the way we give each other new ideas and information and techniques! :blush:

One particularly interesting thing about bud grafting that I had forgotten about is that it can be done much later than most kinds of grafting, and that’s a very good thing. I probably won’t be getting the scions I’ve ordered until late March, according to the website that sells them, and that’s . . . way too late in my climate. I think that’s why my attempts to graft last year failed. The apple trees are already leafed out by then!!

I’m sure the people who sell scions have a lot of experience, and they choose shipping dates based on zip codes and growing zones, but generalizations don’t always apply to specific circumstances, and . . . well, I’m pretty sure late January through early February is the ideal time to graft in my back yard, and late February is already too late. Understandably, a professional orchard does not know what trees do in my back yard; it just chooses shipping dates based on zip code. :face_exhaling:

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Just a heads up for any and all Apple obsessives like ourselves: The Lost Apple Project’s 2025 scion order (and trees for those of us who live out this way) is Live on their Weebly web store. Orders good until February 1st.

Store and More Information HERE

Happy musings!

** I should also add: the Gnarly Pippins web store is now once again selling foot length orders for their scion cuttings fwiw. HERE **

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I’m new here but just wanted to add that I’m currently planting out old apple varietals to try to find raw apples that I might not be allergic to. When I eat a modern raw apple my mouth gets itchy and my throat swells up. I have the same allergy to raw carrots and it is intensified during birch pollen season (it’s a co-allergy with birch pollen). I saw a youtube video in German from a heritage apple orchard farmer named Eckart where he mentioned scientific research done on raw apple allergies and that some older varietals don’t have the same amount of phenolic acids that cause the allergy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCCH44HRK8c

The scientific study is here: Polyphenolic Compounds Analysis of Old and New Apple Cultivars and Contribution of Polyphenolic Profile to the In Vitro Antioxidant Capacity - PMC

So I tried to find the best varietals with the highest tested phenolic acids from the paper so I could grow them and eat fresh apples again (I can eat apples cooked or fermented, they don’t trigger the throat swelling allergy like raw). The best apples the paper mentions are: Berlepsch, Dülmener Rosenapfel, Oldenburger, Ontario. The next best from the paper are: Goldparmäne (Reine des Reinnette), Roter Boskoop. I found some similar but not exactly the same named varietals at Trees of Antiquity (so possibly they are the same as the ones in the paper but the name is variable) and some old ones but not the same as the list from Cummins Nursery. I’m planting out a mini apple orchard food forest style garden in my front yard of ancient apples to hopefully get some apples so I can test if I’m allergic or not to various varietals. I’m also into the idea of mass cross pollination and replanting and trying to make new crosses from old varietals for environmental resilience through genetic diversity over the rest of my lifetime, but I don’t have a patch of land yet for that, borrowed or owned. I’m also into native edible tree crops and native edible plants, I’ve got four different tiny young pawpaws planted, I’m growing maypop out from seed to add genetic diversity to my maypop vine area that has been going for a few years to increase fruiting, and I’m into trying to grow native plums and persimmons and nuts. I’ve got a bunch of tree crop seeds cold stratifying right now.

I’m in east tennessee zone 7b. I make apple butter and can it from all of my friends’ apples that they don’t harvest. I’m planning on making a cider press for myself too since I couldn’t find anywhere near by to rent or borrow one. I’m a mom of two small kids and a hardware engineer so it’s nice to read all of your posts! Hi!

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Hi, Witchy,

“I’m a mom of two small kids and a hardware engineer” That made me chuckle a bit, because the way you worded it, you are either: a mom and a hardware engineer, a mom of 3 children (one of which is a hardware engineer), a mom of 2 children and you consider your hardware engineer husband your third child. :slight_smile:

I am planning to add a diagonal cordon style apple row, this video explains what it is:

I think it may be a good way to test a whole bunch of different apples in a small space, so something that may work for you as well.

Good luck with the efforts!

Maarten

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