Debbie A
I don’t have more thoughts on the subject except that I agree with
@Joseph Lofthouse
about planting seeds. We have several volunteer peach trees from pits that survived composting, and the fruit is delicious. There is evidence of peach borer infestation, but I’ve only lost one tree so far. I’ve planted plum seeds from named varieties, but the fruits, while tasty and good for jam, are small. Have you seen the pistachio trees on the USU campus in Logan? A friend and I picked nuts from those trees, and I have two ‘trees’ (only a foot or so tall after several years) planted in our yard. I often get volunteer trees of all kinds in my pots, and I’m thinking of transplanting them to create a sort of grove, to see which ones can make it on their own. One of my most favorite things is to see a tree pop up in the garden and make it on its own.
Emily S
Unless it’s a Chinese elm, I assume. 
We’ve got a massive infestation of those trees in my neighborhood. They’re so frustratingly invasive!
I don’t think I’ve ever been to Logan, so I had no idea they had pistachio trees there. That’s awesome! Man, I love pistachios . . . I didn’t used to have a tree nut allergy . . .
Debbie A
The story, I believe, is that Iranian students in the 70’s planted pistachio nuts they had brought from home, and a couple of them grew into fairly large trees. They’re not watered or taken care of by anyone.
I get Chinese elm popping up everywhere. At least they have a distinctive leaf and I can pull them out when I see them. I had taken a bonsai class a while back, and the instructor showed us one where he had taken a bunch of Chinese elm seeds and potted them in a tight circular group. They looked like a small forest erupting from a plain.
Emily S
Oh, what kind of things did you learn from the bonsai class? I’ve wondered what the techniques are. I’ve considered trying to grow a mini evergreen tree in a pot to use as a living Christmas tree. If I could keep it small as a houseplant year-round, that would be neat.
That is so awesome about the pistachio trees. That sounds like the right way to plant landscaping trees! Trees that thrive without care are great in a garden, but they’re especially important in a public space, so that they can be left alone and simply do their thing.
hugo m
Same hère Debby. When i moved in the previous owner had planted three peach trees of différent varieties.
They had given so many volunteers.
And some good fruit. I’ve kept seeds and plantes them. They came up a season later.
I tried to make a windbreak for four Yeats. Tried willow and hornbeam(hard as nails, someone said. They didn’t work. One day i looked at a peach as tall as me not far from where my dead hornbeam and willow stood and asked my friend why it did so well. He said it was because it likes it there.
I understood and moved the peachseedlings to the spot. They have held out and do great.
I wouldn’t know about fruit taste because the springs have been eratic with mad late frosts.
But, i’ve got a windbreak growing!
It takes long to see the results.
Akiva Silver describes looking for fruit trees in the wild. And i am rereading his book Trees of Power. I thought quite dôme tomes in fact hé ils landracing trees.
The way hé throws t’en thousand apple seeds down and then puts blight on thèm, to keep the blight résistant trees. Worth a read!!
Debbie A
Thanks for the recommendation, Hugo. Sounds like a good book. Hope your peach windbreak will be fruitful soon. Nothing better than a multitasking plant!
Christopher W
I’m reading Trees of Power for the first time now!
Lauren Ritz
I prefer seed grown trees. Other people don’t agree, but to me they seem better adapted, healthier, and live longer.
I currently have seeds in the refrigerator for peach, apple, pear, plum, apricot, oak, chestnut, pecan and almond. I need to put the grape seeds in and get those started.
One thing to remember is that commercial orchards will often plant trees for pollination that aren’t necessarily food quality. Apple orchards, for example, will often use crab apples. So you could easily get a mix that would not be helpful to you in your goals. Not always, though. My neighbor in my old house had a great apple tree that came from a seed her kids spit out. It had beautiful fruit that didn’t brown in processing and was excellent for juice. I had an interlaken/concord grape cross that had the taste of the concord the color of the interlaken, but ripened midsummer. I have an apricot sitting in a sunny window, along with a peach seedling.
The main problem (so to speak) with landracing trees is that they grow slowly. Most people don’t have twenty or thirty years for one project.
Emily S
My thought is that the most sensible way to get apple, peach, and apricot seeds would be to buy fruit at a farmers’ market, and ask the farmer what all the varieties are that they have. That ought to give me an excellent idea of what the father tree may have been like.
Or of course to ask neighbors if I can have a fruit or two from a tree that is doing extremely well, assuming there aren’t any cultivars I dislike nearby (crabapples, ornamental pears, etc.) that may have been a pollen donor.
I’m pleased that there are loads of apple trees and no crabapples in my neighborhood! There were loads of crabapples in my last neighborhood, so I wouldn’t have wanted to have saved seeds from apples grown there.
I have heard that apple trees grown from seed are way more drought tolerant than transplanted trees, because they have a deep taproot that breaks when a tree is transplanted. It would make sense if that’s true of all other trees, too. That’s a huge argument for growing from seed in a desert!
Ray S
I love the idea of fruit/nut landraces but at 70 I’ll leave their development to younger folk. We do however grow trees from seed - peach (so far good fruit), apple, pear (very thorny!), sweet cherry, sour cherry, quince, loquat, almond, hazel, chestnut, pecan, walnut and oak. Plums have been a disappointment (nasty thorns and suckering habit) so we don’t bother with them anymore. Apart from peaches, the rest have yet to fruit. I don’t expect to see the oaks fruit but future generations may benefit.
Debbie A
You remind me of a dear friend who, at the age of 92, planted 2 persimmon trees, for those future generations. She was an inspiration, as are you! I hope I will still be actively planting at 70 and beyond.
Emily S
Aww, what a wonderful woman! Thinking in terms of the benefit of future generations is a wonderful thing to do. I hope my children, grandchildren, and so on down the line will look at the things I did and be glad of them. I know I am extremely grateful for the many great things my ancestors have done for me.
One thing I’ve considered is that there are a few unusual fruit trees and bushes I’m interested in that are almost hardy enough for my zone. (Kumquats, feijoas, ugniberries, certain banana species, etc.) Since there can be a wide variation of cold hardiness within the same species, growing a whole bunch of seeds and watching for at least one to survive long-term seems like a good strategy. Plus, it’s likely to be cheaper than buying transplant trees. The main issue is that tree seeds can sometimes be really hard to germinate.
Right now I’m looking at some feijoa and fig seeds I have, and going, “These are absolutely tiny. How do I get these to germinate if I’m direct seeding?”
Richard G
I’ve been planting chestnuts since 2010 here in the Missouri Ozarks, trying to bring plenty of diversity of genetics here to see what works best even before ever hearing the word “landrace”. Since 2016 I’ve been growing chestnut trees from seed collected from some of our best trees here, as well as continuing to bring in some new genetics. This year I’ve been able to collect some seed from some of my second generation trees, meaning I’ll soon have third generation trees. Eventually this project may turn into something I’d call a landrace.
Trees should respond to landracing as well as annuals, it just takes much more time. I’ve already grown and selected seeds from more generations of corn than could be done with chestnut trees in a lifetime. Chestnuts with the right genetics do start producing at around five years old for me, but the trees that seem best at five years old aren’t always the ones that are best later on. I have a tree that did great the first few years and produced decent yields of medium-sized nuts starting at year 5. However, later on it put too much energy into nut production, so much that the nuts have been some years almost too small to bother with, and the tree hasn’t grown much, even having die-back of some twigs this year. In contrast, my best producing trees that last couple of years have been a couple of dunstans planted in 2011 that didn’t put on many nuts until the last few years but now have a larger, better looking tree form than most of the others. By waiting a bit longer to put energy into nut production, these trees were able to put more energy into building a tree that’s capable of higher production now.
Emily S
Thinking about it, even if you want a specific cultivar, it might make sense to start from seed anyway, and then use the seed-grown tree as a rootstock. It might be healthier and more locally adapted that way.
Hmmm. That might be an interesting idea, even if I want to try the fruit before committing the tree to being only a rootstock, just because it would fruit sooner that way. I could leave half the branches as the original tree and graft scions onto the rest. Then, when the rootstock finally produces fruit I can taste, I can decide whether I want to cut off the scions and let the tree be entirely itself, or whether I want to put scions on the other half of it.
Does anybody do that? Would there be any downside (other than the extra effort) of doing things that way?
Nut trees interest me, in theory, because they seem like such a great source of protein. Sadly, I have a tree nut allergy. (Sigh.) I read books on foraging, and they keep on mentioning nut trees, and I’m like, “Stop talking about how good those taste! I can’t eat those!”
I’ve read online that acorns usually don’t trigger the same allergic reaction as other tree nuts, so I need to try one acorn and see if I like it and it doesn’t make my mouth itch. If so, I could include those in my list of local wild foods I could forage for.
I’ve read that apple trees are safe to plant only ten feet away from a house’s foundations, because the roots are some of the least invasive for fruit trees. They mostly go down. (That’s probably why they’re also one of the most drought tolerant fruit trees.) So I figure, “Let’s direct sow some apple seeds in that spot where we need shade trees!” I like plants that are valuable in multiple ways.
Christopher W
I’ve planted apple seeds each year for the last four. I planted hazels last year. I have to get some plums and pears out of little pots and into the ground this week. But I won’t have anything to report back for years. I’m hoping to get three generations of apples tasted before I’m gone. Four would be lucky.
Lauren Ritz
You don’t have to wait 5 or 10 or 20 years to find out if you have good fruit, provided you have a suitable rootstock to graft a branch onto.
Ray S
@Lauren Ritz
, if I have a one year old apple seedling and graft it onto an older already fruiting apple how quickly might I expect fruit on the scion?
Lauren Ritz
I really don’t know, as I am not good at grafting (it’s something I’m working on). I would suspect two years, but that’s just a guess. It’s going to take at least a year for the graft to heal.
Emily S
Oh, that’s a cool idea! I hadn’t thought about doing the reverse, grafting a branch of the seedling onto another tree! Wow, that’s cool.
Lowell M
Ken Asmus from Oikos Tree Crops has been doing a lot of work with trees and permaculture plants that would fall under the umbrella of landrace methods. It’s sad that his nursery is closed. He still has seasonal items for sell but I think you can only purchase in bulk which is expensive. Anyways, definitely worth checking out all the varieties and projects he has worked on, and for the most part still is working on.
J Larsen
I was watching How Mark Shephard’s Farm THRIVES on Neglect (Extended Version) - YouTube and Mark Shephard talked about how he created a landrace (he didn’t use that name) of some nut trees where he grows them and saves any seed from trees that make fruit their first year. I think if you could get ones that make fruit their first year or 2 and cull the rest you could create a more realistic landrace after 3 to 5 years instead of a lifetime. I also love lauren’s idea of using grafting to bring in branches of ones that you might cull just in case the fruit is really good.
Emily S
Wow! That’s brilliant! I really like that idea. Not realistic if you have to buy seeds, but if you already have established fruit trees that you’re saving those seeds from (on your land or a neighbor’s or out in the wild or wherever), you could save a whole bunch and plant them all out and not mind if you had to cull 99% of them every year.
That’s a really smart idea. I like it!
J Larson
I bet that you could just go to the farmers market and buy a bushel of whatever fruit you wanted, save all those seeds, and plant them. That could be hundreds. I think you could plant them super close together (like every 6 inches or 1ft) and just cull anything that isn’t growing really well. If you’re doing pit fruit it’d be a little harder, but you could potentially talk to neighbors that have fruit trees for those, and just ask them to save them. If you plant them so that you have a fruit tree every foot, then you could pick ones that do really well and either keep them there or transplant them at the end of the season
Emily S
I’ve considered doing that very thing! In fact, I have about 10 peach pits and 100 cherry pits sitting around that I’ve been thinking about doing that very thing with. I got the fruits for all of them from the farmers’ market. My plan was to be very careful about choosing what to plant and where, though. That video made me realize, “Oh, duh! I can just plant them all where I want trees and see if anything grows, and then I will have spent no money and very little time or worry on it!”
I LOVE that guy’s attitude of always sticking the seeds out of a fruit he’s eaten in the ground somewhere on his land where it has a chance to grow. That’s brilliant. It seems like a very simple, easy to remember, easy to implement system that will eventually (literally) bear fruit.
Yeah, in the book Grow a Little Fruit Tree (which I read a few months ago), I was stunned and really excited to learn that if I keep fruit trees pruned, I can pretty much almost completely ignore spacing. I could have, say, a hedge of six-foot-tall apple trees that are all planted six inches apart if I want to. It just takes regular pruning to make sure they aren’t competing with each other for sunlight too much. I LOVE that idea. It seems so space efficient, so interesting, and so beautiful.
And I’m wild about his point that you can figure out which trees fruit quickly just by planting tons of seeds and culling all the ones that aren’t among the first to fruit, and planting seeds from the ones that are in the now vacated places. In retrospect, that’s so duh!
J Larson
What if you just planted 100 of them wherever, and transplant a few of the very best, take off a scion from each and put it on a neighbor’s apple tree. You could then taste them the next year and only keep ones that have good apples, and save their seeds and plant those and repeat
You could even not worry about saving the original trees, just cut them and make them into a scion for the big tree. Then only the last year you move the best one to the final place
Emily S
Probably good ideas for someone who wants to transplant eventually. One of the reasons I want to start from seed is to that my apple trees are never transplanted. I’ve read that seed-grown apple trees have much deeper tap roots than ones that were transplanted (because the taproot gets broken during transplanting), and having that tap root intact will make for much better drought tolerance. Since drought tolerance is one of the biggest things I want for my fruit trees, that sold me on the idea of starting from seed!
J Larsen
true, though you could make a landrace first, and then grow in place once you get reliable ones.
Emily S
True! But I’d rather have the reliable ones in a place I’m comfortable with keeping them in the first place.
The ideas and inspiration in this thread inspired me so much that I went and took all the seeds I’ve collected out of apples the past few days and planted them in my side yard. I’ve been planning to grow some apple trees from seed there anyway, but I hadn’t decided which seeds to plant. I decided to plant about 30, and let Strategic Total Utter Neglect choose which ones grow for me.
These seeds all came from the same mother: a tree with tasty apples growing in my friend’s yard a few streets away, which is healthy, with not a lot of pest damage, and near no crabapples that I know of. It occurred to me as I was cutting them up for preserving that the offspring of that tree may be ideal for my purposes.
So, rather than carefully saving three seeds (which was what I’d been planning to do), I planted all 30 or so in a row where I want to have three trees. I won’t care for them at all; I’ll just see what sprouts and does well, and if any of them fruit in the first year. Apples do extremely well in Provo (we have orchards all over the place; I’ve even seen apple trees growing wild in a park near me), so my chances of getting something out of those seeds that is great for my growing conditions is probably high.
Oh! One thing worth considering is that fruit trees often don’t produce their best quality fruit in their first year of fruiting. That’s what I’ve been told, anyway. It was specifically regarding figs, but the guy said it was true of most fruit trees and bushes. So if a fruit tree produces fruit and you think it’s just okay, it may be better not to cull it yet – it may be better to give it a second year to please you. That seems like a worthwhile thing to know with breeding fruit trees.
Mark R
Used to when we went to the big international grocery, I would go to what we called the used food department where they mix up packages of apples, pears and the like and sell them for 10% of the cost as those out on the shelves. Some are past being much good to eat but the seeds are fine. I didn’t pay any attention to variety names. I have noticed, as someone mentioned that the pears sometimes have thorns, or more like big spikes.
Locally, I collected the best of the best of walnut, hickory, pecan, pawpaw, persimmon and wild plum and even the elusive feral pears and peaches. They came from a general area from Indianapolis, IN to Lexington, KY and from Cincinnati, OH to Louisville, KY so I think they are already a landrace. I just tried to concentrate the best of the best into one, more compact area around where I live.
I used to buy bulk (own root) grape vines from a place in New York, so much cheaper that way that I could pot up and sell a quarter of them and get all my money back. I would load them in my backpack and go for a walk.
I say used too because I am completely out of room at my place and along my trails on the nearby state-owned hunting preserve, and long the gravel backroads and creek valleys in my neighborhood.
I have a special affinity for grapes, and they are the only ones I mess with much anymore because it’s easy to just take a bunch of seeds or cuttings along for a hike and plant them. My hope is they will cross with our many variations of wild grapes and eventually end up with wild vines that have larger fruits.
I don’t plant much of anything at my place anymore unless I come across something that it’s worth cutting something else down.
@Emily S
I pretty much ran out of room in what you might call the yard in just a couple of years, took a bit longer for the rest of the place and then another fifteen years or so everywhere else.
I had slowed down a lot already when a few years ago the emerald ash borers arrived and killed all the big ash trees, so I started over replacing them with pecans. They grow faster than the other big nut trees.
When walnut and pecan started coming up all over the place from nuts the squirrels stole form our porch, I realized that they don’t really find and dig back up all that they burry, so I just started dumping five-gallon buckets of them here and there for them to plant.
I haven’t stopped completely, just this past weekend we visited my favorite hickory tree and hit the jackpot. It’s in an old graveyard several miles away. Got there just as a big windstorm had knocked them all down but before the squirrels got them all.
It is the only tree of its phenotype, I’ve ever seen. It isn’t nearly as tall as most old hickories but much, much more spreading, looks like a giant umbrella. The nuts are three times the size of any other I’ve ever seen, bigger than most black walnuts. Shells are much thicker too, a real pain to open but worth the effort. They can lay in the ground for three or four years before sprouting.
I was really excited to get a nice haul from it this year as it may be the last. It has been struck by lightning at least twice and is dying. ALL of the nuts we found are getting planted. Well, maybe I’ll crack just enough for one pie.
Ryder T
That’s a really interesting sounding hickory! Hope it flourishes wherever you plant it
