So one day my 4 yr old is eating an apple and asks my wife about seeds & such. So they decide to do a little expirement and plant the seed. Low and behold a seedling sprouts up and they cherish it and nuture it, etc, etc. 5 months later and the thing is only about 5 inches tall, but has a bunch of leaves on it. They've got it in a little container(we live in Ohio).
Thing is, they both think they are going to plant it outside next spring and my wife seems to think that in a few years we'll have an apple tree. And of course she is telling my son this. Meanwhile, I'm skeptical of the whole thing. First of all, we don't know what kind of apple it was, we don't know if it'll survive in Ohio and we certainly don't know if it will bear fruit. Doesn't their have to be some cross pollination or something for a tree to bare fruit?
I'd purchase an Heirloom variety of your choice. This as backup. BUT I'd also plant the seeds of a few different apples you have eaten. May have to expose them to cold temps I don't know the particulars. But, given an inquisitive for year old I'd go for it.
I would plant it outside *now* and give it a little bit of protection this winter. The dormancy should be good for it.
The fruit will be edible, but probably not very good. But you can always graft a good variety (or 2 or 3) onto your tree *after* you know that it's awful. ;-) It also might be a good cider or jelly apple even if it's not good for eating.
It may take 10 years to get any fruit. You'll start getting fruit in 2 or 3 years if you buy a 1 year old semi-dwarf tree.
It is my understanding that all apples grown for eating come from grafted trees. The apples do no pass on a clone of their own genes and the apples that come from seeds are inferior. "Johnny Appleseed" apparently planted trees to bear fruit intended for the production of hard cider. You may have a tree from the seed, but it could be one that is prone to disease and produce inferior fruit.
-------------- http://www.poll>
Before going on with this, I want you to first ask you to make a choice:
Do I want to spend many years of my life looking for that "needle in a haystack," trying to develop new and worthwhile apple varieties? OR
Do I want to do something educational for the kids, but don't care about the end results (in terms of fruit) OR
Do I want to raise fruit in my backyard? Your saving from "especially good apples" makes me think that this is your real desire.
If your answer is 1: Plan on planting large quantities of seeds (and having the place to grow them). Apples that are grown from seed bear little resemblance to the parent (the fruit that you ate), they are crossed between varieties and the tendency is for them to revert to apple types that are not so good for our purposes. Consider that the "daddy" for your apple may well be a crab apple, as these are widely planted in orchards for pollenizers. Chances are that your apple, after all the years and the work of growing it will be only suitable for food for wildlife, or maybe to add to the mix for cider to give it some zing. You may get one in a thousand seedlings that is a really good apple, and one in a million that is worth propagating as a new variety. If you are interested in developing new apple varieties, then consider joining the North American Fruit Explorers.
If your answer is 2: Chill your apple seeds for at least six weeks in a baggie of damp peat in the fridge. Then plant them on a sunny windowsill, in paper cups for the kids to watch, or outside in the spring. Throw them away when done.
If your answer is 3: Buy good nursery stock on dwarf or semidwarf stock from a good nursery like Cummins Nursery: It is well worth the investment.
If you grow from seeds, you will wait 6-10 years to get a serious crop of apples that you may well find to be worthless. If you grow from good stock, properly cared for and pollinated, you should have a decent crop of quality apples in three to four years. I have planted apples on full dwarf stock and had a few apples the year I planted them. Cummins Nursery will also help you come up with compatible pollenizer pairs (never plant lone apple trees, unless you have lots of blooming crab apples in the neighborhood).
Seedlings and grafts on seedlings have a major disadvantage of being huge trees. Consider yourself at age 60 or 70 trying to climb a 20 foot ladder with a picking bag, and you will see the wisdom of trees that do not need a ladder. Take a delightful look at "Gene's Backyard Orchard" to see what can be done.
Finally, you can find a WEALTH of info on fruit growing thru The Pollination Home Page. Check on home horticulture for a lot of links, even how to grow fruit organically....
It may be inferior, or it may not. The tree I have, Dorset Golden, is listed as a chance seedling found in Bermuda. Good apples and very low chilling requirements.
The tree will probably be inferior, but it may be superior, no way to tell without trying.
fun to grow your own, as long as you have reasonable expectations.
I'd say, if you have the space to spare, go for it.
Yup, six years ago I stuck some seeds from a citrus I was eating in a pot of soil. People said they probably wouldn't germanate.
Two came up. People here < locally > said the sprouts probably wouldn't last long. One has survived, transplanted into a 22 inch pot.
Then people said it probably would never bloom and even if it did it would more 'n likely be sterile and not produce any fruit. This year it finally bloomed for the first time and has about 2 dozen citrus on it up to an inch and a half across. Now I'm getting " The fruit will probably taste like crap " from them. We'll see, so far the nay sayers are batting zero. :)
You may be wondering why I keep saying citrus. To tell the truth, I plumb forgot what type of citrus it was I was eating when I stuck the seeds in the ground. I do remember thinking it was a most excellent fruit, which is why I stuck the seeds in an unused pot. Now I've had months of expectation anticipating how they're going to taste.
You just can't buy entertainment like this. Some friends even have a lottery going as to what it's going to be.
Who said gardening is boring?
Bill < who was privledged to see a most excellent rainbow this evening while enjoying the fragrances wafting off his Sweet Autumn Clematis and Angels Trumpet, living la vida loca.>
I see this kind of question every so often on this board, and I should just have a standard reply on file to answer it. Anybody who wastes their time with growing apples from seed is either an experimental station planting hundreds of them with the hope that something unusual emerges, or people like yourself who spend years nurturing this tree, only to find out that the resulting apples taste like (you know what). It's a genetic thing with the resultant tree not getting it's genes from the original tree, but something from a previous generation of that tree, which mostly does not resemble it's parent. Stone fruits have a better chance of reproducing from seed, but even that is chancy. You have as much chance of getting a good apple as winning big in the lotto. You can buy a small tree for as little as 15 to 20 dollars and you then know exactly what variety you have. Most apple trees require another 'malus' or apple family tree to pollinate for fruit, although some like Yellow Delicious are self fertile. If you have a crab apple tree, that works. If your neighbors have any of those trees, that also would probably work.
Sherw> So one day my 4 yr old is eating an apple and asks my wife about seeds &
Citrus often *does* grow true from seed. Sometimes citrus seeds will grow 2 plants instead of one, and I've read that one of those will be a clone of the mother plant. I don't know if it's the larger or the smaller sprout, but if you only keep seedlings from seeds that grow 2 shoots, and you seperate and keep both seedlings, at least 50% should be good.
Apples never grow true from seed, and seldom are very good, but at least an apple tree that you grew from a seed will be *unique* :-)
Yup, the worse that could happen is the tree dies. The best, he gets a good tasting apple. Most likely, he gets a shade tree, but the kid gets to, mayby, develop an interest in growing things and that's the important part.
sherwindu wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net:
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I am sorry but I have to 100% disagree with this point.
About a dozen years ago, I bought a Navel orange tree to plant in my back yard. I was over-joyed with the delicious oranges that it produced the very first year so I decided to plant two more Navel orange trees.
I went to the nursery and checked the stock of citrus trees. Each plant had a label glued onto the pot which declared it to be a Navel orange. Each plant also had a plastic strip wrapped around the trunk saying "Navel Orange" and each plant had a large tag hanging from it with a photograph and planting instructions and specifications and "Navel Orange" declared in large letters. I picked out the two best looking ones and planted them.
As soon as they produced fruit I knew something was not right. None of the fruit had navels (Belly Buttons) on them. I watched with interest to see what the ripe fruit would be like when they ripened. One of the trees turned out to be a "Blood Orange". The fruit is small .... just a little bigger than a lemon although it is more spherical in shape than a lemon with juice that is bright red in color. It is tasty but not worth the trouble to eat. The tree is still in my back yard but only because I have not gotten around to digging it up and disposing of it. The other tree was a dissapointment at first because it was not a Navel Orange but it has turned out to be a real treasure. It produces large fruit which has seeds and no Belly Button but it has a characteristic which makes it highly desirable. The fruit ripens between Thanksgiving and Christmas and it stays fresh and delicious hanging on the tree almost the entire year long. I have no idea what type of Orange it is but I am very happy to have it.
After this experience I wanted to plant a Seckel Pear. I told the owner of the nursery about my experience with the Navel Oranges and asked, "Are you sure that these trees are Seckel Pears?" He replied, "There is no way to be sure. I had a special order for 200 Seckel pear trees. This is what my supplier shipped to me but you can never know for sure". I do not believe that what I got was a Seckel pear. The fruit does not look like the photos of Seckel pears that I have seen but it is not a bad pear either so I will not complain.
My conclusion is this. There is only one sure way to know what you are getting. Plant a seedling for rootstock. Then take a scion from a known tree of the desired type and graph it onto the rootstock. Even then the rootstock selected could possibly have a effect on the finished product. When it comes to apple trees you can buy a 5-in-1 at some nurseries. This is a potted tree with 5 different varieties graphted onto a single rootstock. Let it grow and in later years just prune off the parts that you dont like.
I'm sure there are people who buy Rolls Royces and have mechanical problems. Things occasionally go wrong even with the best plans. The question is if your experience is typical or atypical. I would say that it is not typical. You are right in that grafting known material onto root stock is a proven way to guarantee getting the tree you want, but for most of us it isn't a realistic alternative.
If the kids are typical, they will have forgotten about the tree in about 3 minutes. Meanwhile you will be stuck with a tree that is almost guaranteed to be worthless in terms of fruit production and which is likely to grow quite large. If the kids are 7 now, they will be about 17 when the tree first produces apples. You know how excited a 17 year old can get about a tree producing inedible apples -- I'd say about as excited as making sauerkraut or doing the ironing. Meanwhile you will be picking up the rotting fruit that attracts yellow jackets and other wildlife. Furthermore, the typical family moves about every 5 years, so the chances of even being around when the tree produces is quite slim. I see people make really poor plant choices in my neighborhood and then move. The problem is ultimately passed along to someone else. That innocent experiment or impulse purchase turns into someone else's expensive tree removal.
There are lots of plants you can grow from seed besides apples. If you want to teach a science lesson then by all means do it. If you want fruit grown on a manageable tree, then buy one. There is no need for both "experiments" to be linked. I see parents project their own interests onto children. It is surprising how little Megan becomes interested in making ice-cream when it just happens that mom is interested in making ice-cream. Therefore, mom justifies her purchase of the $400 ice-cream freezer based on her 6 year old's sudden interest. This is a scenario that actually happened in my family.
But if one really wants a full-sized apple tree anyway, a seedling is not a bad way to start. You can graft it or bud it later. Full-sized (a.k.a. standard) is the key here, and a standard apple is a poor choice for most people because they are so large and because they take so long to begin fruiting.
I've been here for 50 years. Mistakes aplenty, but still OK. I'm inclined to encourage many mistakes yet at the same time I wonder what I culled may have harbored a mistake or loss of beauty. We name trees that got our attention and sometimes however the Linnea tree is of no value except to burn during the holidays over time. Typical child is a misnomer. Let them make mistakes and maybe they will learn by them. Hope so! Won't have much to market only memories that possess a physical manifestation.
58 Year old child Bill who smiled when a four year old wanted to garden.
It seems the lesson here is that you can manipulate your parents into tending a worthless tree for several decades. Now, if you follow through and make the 15 year old cut the tree down and dig out the stump instead of going to Disney World, then indeed there might be a lesson.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Many well known apples were found originally as seedlings. That so few exist, and have not been improved, shows how unlikely your seedling will be worthwhile in the 15yrs it will take to fruit. Nothing ever grows totally true from seed and apples have such a complicated background~~ making your chances minuscule. HOWEVER you could quite simply graft your seedling onto a small branch of an existing fruiting~ age tree and then expect fruit in fewer months than years. It just might have been worthwhile. If worthwhile~ then graft on to other rootstocks and await your fortune!! Commercially millions are grown and grafted in this way each year but few, if any, become well known. Best Wishes Brian.
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