Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Raising fruit trees from seed?

The apple tree thread has me wondering.. Anyone raise fruit trees from seed?

Grafting is the way to replicate a specific variety of many species in a predictable way due to cross pollination. Saves you a little time also versus starting from a seed.

John Chapman got his nickname planting mostly seeds (I believe) which would have resulted in a random type of apple that loosely reflected its parentage.

You can but you might not know what pollinated it and end up with a crappy apple after caring for it for years. Better to buy a known tree and type of apple you want from a reputable nursery.

It'd be more hobby, it'd take a long time before any apples..

There are so many hybrids and grafted trees I would think most of the seeds are sterile. You could plant the seed but never even get a tree to sprout. I did this with some peach pits this last year and got nothing. Pretty much what I expected but I had to try. I'll just go to Stark Bros. or Fleet and Farm to get my trees.

kwg

one of my orange trees grew from a seed taken from a tree at my son's place. Took awhile, many years, but it produces great fruit

We had a small lemon on a tree from seed.

Growing fruit trees from seed is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get!

I propagate hundreds (if not a thousand) fruit trees and bushes every year.

Seed is one method... but generally not my preference.

Hybrids don't breed true. Most likely you'll get a tree from one of the parents and some of those are pretty bad. Plant breeding is very technical and takes a lot of training. Don't waste your time. By the time you find out that the fruit is useless, you could be eating quality fruit from a nursery.

Chapman was an itinerate preacher who wandered all over the place. He'd go to cider presses and collect seeds that he scattered along the way on his travels. He had hopes of some of them providing apples for future travelers to eat along their way. Some were pretty bad as he had no idea what kind he was planting. They were often crossbred and a waste of time to grow.

I think if Wabi dug a ditch... and crawled in it with a bunch of his favorite seeds...

Had Gilbert bury the seeds...

We would all rejoice...

Be fruitful Wabi!

Be fruitful...

Don’t they all come from seeds

Originally, yes. But ALL current apple production is from clones of each and every hybrid grown commercially. In the old days folks would often have an orchard for cider production. Just random trees from where ever.

There is a large Russian forest dominated by wild apples. No two trees are the same.

Oh wow

Not intentionally

If you and your bride want figs... I'll bring you some next summer...

Very least... they are great for wildlife.

FIL has several just reminded me

Sitka Deer;
Good afternoon sir, I hope that the day behaved thus far for you and your fine family.

Thanks for the interesting tidbit about the forest of wild apples, I'd not heard of that before but it's not surprising.

Somewhere I read something to the effect that most if not all of Johnny Appleseed's orchards were cider apples. If I'm not wrong, a whole lot of the varieties were lost as well when Prohibition came in as there was a concerted effort to eradicate said cider trees because of the demon alcohol they produced.

We had a volunteer tree in our yard that produced the nicest apples, which unfortunately had to be taken out when we did a major renovation.

Now you could ask me if I grabbed some buds from it and grafted them onto the Granny Smith tree in the yard, you know like someone with even a minute amount of forethought would have done.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't ask me that Sitka, but you could.....

When we had horses still and I used to roam the mountain behind the house via Appaloosa power, there were a few volunteer trees that we found over the years that she loved to stop at.

Honestly looking back at it now, she likely smelled them and steered me over towards the wild apples and since I was hunting mostly and not paying attention always to where she wandered.

Interestingly apples, apricots and plums are the only wild or maybe feral fruit trees we find in the hills, never a cherry, peach or nectarine tree.

Most of the apple trees in the orchards here are grafted root stock which I'm told are more disease resistant, but I'm not sure if that's the case or not.

Thanks again and all the best to you all.

Dwayne

You might try Stark Brothers.

Yepp...

Hard to beat them on pears or blueberries... especially if you don't have rockstar propagation stock.