I’ve followed this guy for a couple of years now. He has some interesting videos on growing apples, but the thrust of this article is that growing good quality seedling apples is much easier than most people think. Like him, I get tired of people telling me that it’s pointless to grow fruit and nut tree seedlings. Every high quality fruit and nut cultivar that exists today was once a seedling.
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Skillcult Steven Edholm is one of our illustrious forum members.
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I get if you have the room for it certainly. Most folks wih a ‘backyard’ orchard can’t give up space for a chance apple seedling that could possibly be a good pollinator with miniscule fruit or bird size.
I however do have the room and have kicked around the idea to just let 1 grow to see what it may be. I suppose the drawback is waiting so long to find out what it may be.
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Glad to hear that.
I figure if you start with a decent quality apple your chances aren’t too bad if you’re able to control the seed and pollen parent. I always worry that the pollen for a commercially grown apple will be from a crab. I compulsively save seeds and have a stratification bag going year round. I have about 100 seedling apples from random cultivars that I’m planning on using as rootstock. Of course I’ll save a few of their tops for fun.
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I encourage all of our members here to support Stephen by subscribing to his youtube channel and liking his videos. He’s doing a lot of cool homesteading videos and at least a small part of his income is from youtube. The more subscribers and likes his videos get the more money he makes. He has some great videos on apple seedlings, red fleshed apples, grafting, and fruit pollination. Well worth the watch.
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Most of the commercially grown apples are sports from the original cultivar. The sports of things like Red Delicious aren’t anything like the original seedling. The original isn’t being sold in stores. So I guess for the most part you’re right, most of the great cultivars were seedlings.
Awesome. It should be far from ready yet. Make sure you sample them through as long a season as possible. They really have to develop on the tree. Typically, early on they will have super mild flavors like green grape or sugarcane, until the umami starts to develop toward the end. That’s when the magic happens. Look forward to hearing more. Scabby as usual. Mine are ripe in October sometime here.
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Steven- I just ate another Bite Me alongside some Wicksons. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wickson is in the apple’s parentage. Similar champagne vinous super sweet spicy savory malty flavor. Similar bite.
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Yeah, it is . It’s an open pollinated Wickson seedling.
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If you are getting some of that malty umami flavor already, you should get a lot of it as it ripens more.
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Here are some Wicksons doing that “Wickson thing.”
I wonder if the other parent of Bite Me is Williams’ Pride.
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Defintiely not WP. The orchard I got it never grew those, I actually gave them scions later trying to get them to grow it. Probably won’t ever figure out the other parent. They have a lot of apple varieties there.
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Have any of your seedlings fruited?