I’d like to hear about everyone’s experiences growing Apple trees from seed. I understand fully you won’t get a gala from a gala etc. etc. But from what I’ve gathered statistically you’ll get a fruit between the size of a quarter dollar to a half dollar. Does that sound about right?
I’m mainly going for a decent cider apple with resistance to cedar apple rust, the biggest problem in my area thanks to abundant cedar trees.
I crossed an unknown red apple the size of a baseball to a deep red fleshed crab apple. And 75% of the seedlings from that cross are to some degrees red leafed or tinted the stems.
Did get a tricot that was more vigorous in the first few months
I have about 30 seedlings at varying stages of growth, I’m thinking about sowing more of the seeds in a row and doing more heavy selection, but is it worth it? Is 30 enough to whittle down to a couple promising trees or should I do more while the season is still young?
If you are starting with small fruit parent plants then it would be very unlikely to get larger fruits, but if both parents are large fruited varieties you may see a range of medium to larger fruits in many of the offspring.
There are many people doing some really interesting apple breeding now, Skillcult on youtube is a great example.
My apples (or any other fruit trees) grown from seed have generally not survived more than a couple of years - as opposed to grafted fruit trees bought from Fedco etc. that generally do well here. I have, at this point, one healthy-looking 3yo seed-grown tree that is a cross of Arkansas Black x unknown.
I’ve sprouted around 50 apple seeds over the past 2 years, maybe 100? And I now have 2 actually trees that survived 2 winters (not hard) and 2 summers (hard). And I’ve got 20-30 more seeds that are germinated and need to get put in dirt. I figure I’ll find the strongest trees if I start with lots and lots and let mother nature weed out the not great for here trees. They’ve all, so far, come from store apples we’ve eaten. Most gala and fuji as those are the ones I like. I think next year I’ll see about graphing a fruit producing branch on to one or both, depending on what I can find for graph-able twigs.
Are you doing anything for protection from deer/rabbits?
I built cages around mine for the deer but the rabbits can still get in and even after spraying the seedlings with a pepper deterrent they still “tasted” many of them.
Last I checked many of those trees that had been chomped were still surviving. But this will be the first summer for my trees.
No. I don’t have issues with rabbits or deer atm. I’ve seen a rabbit around, and it might be eating some of my things, so maybe that’s what happened to the 10 others I planted out. I have bigger problems with squirrels and snails, really. And ants. And if something can survive the pressures around here, that’s okay. That’s why I plant a lot of seeds! Bc a lot will die, but hopefully I’ll get a few survivors.
I had collected apple seeds for a while and have them growing now. I had 1/4 cup of seeds. I now have 46 seedlings in cups and more seeds continue to sprout in the starting tray. It’s far more successful than I expected
I’m looking at making an air prune bed for them now. More space efficient than cups.
I don’t really have a plan, just thought I’d end up with some trees and see how it goes.
I currently have 20 seedlings. I’ll do more next spring. The three I have planted out are under cover because of rabbits and chickens. If these survive, they will be my first survivors. The two I thought were apple trees turned out to be pears.
One of my neighbors at my old house had an amazing seed grown apple tree. The fruit didn’t brown. It wasn’t a good eating apple, but for juice or apple chips it was perfect. The result of her kids having an apple seed spitting contest.
I think whrn they say “One in 10,000,” they are referring to commercially viable varieties. My experience has been otherwise.
I’ll have to check them out.
I know the odds of getting a big fruit are nearly nill, but I’m after something at least bigger than the red fleshed crab apple that was the pollen donor.
Your seedling in the red pot looks very similar to a couple seedlings I have. I don’t know the parentage of mine; i just continually plant apple cores and tasty crabapples from time to time. I have had had quite a few seedlings emerge but not survive the summer, or winter. This being with minimal to no care, no watering. But I have two or three reddish ones like yours. My perspective is that large yummy fruit would be awesome but also just a flowering crabapple type of tree would be great too. I’ve discovered that many crabapples produce delicious fruit… it just doesn’t ripen until about January here in zone 6a. (Which is much appreciated at that time of year). Similarly to rose hips or highbush cranberry. The birds leave them alone until they ripen, too.
Big topic. To me personally it’s always worth it even if ending up with great tasting apple cider vinegar..but the wild apples i seeded didn’t sprout. but…It depends it’s hard to get it “right” and recreate a natural setting where you’ll have a great tasting apple that you don’t have to help. But that counts for all appletrees, so keep going… Most store bought apples have crab-apple genetics as a father, because they flower the longest rate and with an enormous amount of flowers as they have need those to create all those tiny apples. Chances of those giving a decent sized apple are very small. But you can always graft onto those with a decent rootsystem..
I don’t know about the root properties of Fuji and Gala and all those in fashion, but usually they’re grafted on top of a root stock with dwarf roots, so the tree stays small and feels sick and wants to create as many apple offspring immediately, not caring too much about growing high. The genetics for developing a root system which produces a big tree are simply not present. I would say that most wild apples i see around here do not even possess a superb rooting system, because they’re usually outgrown and they need to quickly grow and move seeds through fruits. Back on topic, the human taste buds preferred super sweet apples now in style are not selected for a good strong root system. So you won’t get that. They crossed them and if the taste was fantastic even with super weak root system they did not care one bit.
I tried and failed and used rootstock and continue to graft onto self rooted and cut lose rootstock. I just scan where i live when leaving the village and look for late flowering apples. I scan for late flowering apple trees, I look for late december apples and ask the owner for a graft. But a friend grows make many crossed red apples like skillcult and it’s rare to get a decent tasting apple. But hey red apple cider vinegar ain’t bad.
I have around 100 apple trees growing from seed on their second year. Their ancestry is from a climate very different from mine - I want to i produce the interesting genetics from Steven Edholm / Skillcult - so I expect many will not thrive. I assume you will have much better chances if you sow seed from varieties known to grow well in your region.
I grow apples and other fruit trees in large seed trays the first year, then bare root them and over winter them in bunches. For apples I hang them in the polytunnel so mice dont eat the root collar and bark. This year I let them stay a few weeks too long so they leafed out too early and struggled after being planted in the field. I put spiral bark protectors on them all.
The other evening I got 40ish seeds potted up. All has spent 3.5 months in a wet paper towel in a ziplock in the fridge. Little over half had roots. Only two days later and I’ve got leaves poking out of soil! Yeah, I know a commercial variety doesn’t make strong trees, but I figure I’ll find one out these 100s I’ve planted that will both survive and produce. My expectations are that half of these seeds, or more, won’t survive the summer for some reason, and another quarter will meet their demise before I get them transplanted out. If I get 1 or 2 trees more after a year out of this batch, I’m doing good.
The hard part is waiting for them to flower and set fruit! I’ve read it can take 7-10 years.
If you trick the trees into setting lots of internodes, they will generally start fruiting after a set amount of internodes. If you grow them in a Polytunnel and/or stake them, you can get them to fruit as early as in three years. An apple breeder from Kent in the UK called Karim Habibi uses this technique.
Internodes are the places along them where the leaves come out. With apple, fruiting generally starts when the tree has grown around 120 internodes or so.
If you take a long stick and tie the little apple tree to the stick as it grown, the tree will generally get taller faster. It doesn’t put in energy into stiffening the stem (as the stick does that). With greater height, you get more internodes. Quicker fruiting. The tree leaves the juvenile phase and enters the adult fruiting phase.
If you do this in a greenhouse/polytunnel, you can often get 3 meters growth in a year. The apple tree might even fruit that very year!
Newer apple varieties have been selected for early fruiting, so if you have that kind of genetics, you’ll get early fruiting too
I was just reading about this. On YouTuber said to stake the tip of the tree down, making it more horizontal. So buds along the stem will grow out. I think I can do that even now. I don’t want to prune, I did back in jan or Feb, taking the tips off. Both trees out in the garden are taking off with all the rain and warm days we’ve had. Understanding this is helpful, thank you, malte rod!
I have been growing Malus sieversii from seed since 2012 when I first made a collection of seeds from apple trees in the hills around Almaty, Kazakhstan. They are vigorous and very diverse, I have around 160 trees which are now mostly coming into fruiting. If anyone is interested in seeds from these trees then I’d be happy to share some.
