Apple trees from seed

Seedlings are all random rolls of the genetic dice-- likely to grow slowly but steadily into monstrously big “standard-size” apple trees.

A video you might find entertaining:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h29uBlqSrgQ

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Knowing that the Cripps originated in a hot climate like Australia makes me think I might have chance of it doing well down here…no worries about cold autumn days until usually late November, sometimes even December.

If it grows to huge standard tree that wouldn’t bother me in the least…

Give them a few years and they’ll look like this…

This was a few weeks ago…it has fruit developing now. I have no idea the seed source…probably honeycrisp. It is in a 15 gallon pot.

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that’s beautiful. looks like a healthy tree.

I want to start a few out in my pasture. It really doesn’t matter if they are that good to eat I mainly want them for the deer. Right now until I get enough trees started I have been planting black eyed peas for the deer.

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They really like the M9 Rootstock. It sounds like a really nice rootstock. I just am not willing to support all my trees… Maybe… I should consider a change. :grinning:

On the Fire Blight thread, they said M9 is susceptible to fire blight. You may want to look further into this before switching.

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I was just jesting… I have almost if not 200 trees on M111 and at my age… I don’t see my hobby taking that big of a change. Now @Matt_in_Maryland he’s still a young whipper snapper… he is still in the building stage… I’m just playing with my out of control hobby… :grin:

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Good way to weed them out (seedlings) is to take any slow growers/diseased trees and toss them. I know i’ve had seedlings that have had CAR and i got rid of them. I also have a few in ground seedlings that are much bigger (MAtt is right…they like to grow)—prune prune prune.

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at what point should I transfer each to their own pot?

after about 2 and 1/2 months the apple seedlings are still doing well. knock wood. weather has been in the mid 90’s pretty much every day since June and I’ve kept them in a moderately shaded area that gets sun but is out of the scorching mid-day heat. If I get lucky a couple of these might make it to trees. For my grandkids…

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Updated picture of apple seedling. We’ve had a ton of rain recently so I was worried it was going to drown, but it seems to be doing fine. Amazes me it’s been able to survive the summer heat down here.

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Seedling apple progress…in another coulple years I might actually have a tree…

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I’ll have to get back with this thread in a couple of months.

I started a bunch of seeds just to see what happened and most of them made nice 2-3 ft whips which I then grafted to known varieties (a year later). Most of them took and then I lost interest because I had no need for full size trees.

Anyway, I let them die in their little 1 gallon pots but I saved one…

It looks like it’s going to make it and I am going to plant it out beyond the orchard and see what happens.

Someday after I’m gone there may be a great big tree in my yard.

I grew out a bunch of seedlings and budded them to a mature tree…things are just waking up here so hopefully the buds will come alive and maybe next year or 2 years i can see what they do. I’ve had a few seedlings fruit for me…nothing too exciting so far…one ended up being a crab-ish type apple…but it has big pretty blooms.

I don’t think that you understood. ( I said it wrong) The rootstock is a seedling and the rest of the tree is a named variety.

One thing I’ve noticed around here is that seedling crabapples (most are crabs, a couple are apples) don’t get gnawed on by rodents much. Deer also seem to browse the young growth less than a grafted/named cultivar.

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This is less than a month since the last picture…

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At the rate this is growing I should be able to put it in the ground next year…

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I grafted a stick of my seedling to Emla 7 this spring in hopes of seeing fruit sooner

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