Fruiting seedlings

[scottfsmith]

Is anyone else getting first fruit on seedlings they grew out themselves? I have had a few in past years but this year I’m getting some better ones.

I have an apple I’m calling Pineapple Gold. I think its a seedling of Pitmaston Pineapple but it could also be from Golden Russet. Its very similar to those apples in texture and taste. The size is about like Pitmaston, small but not tiny. I only got one so it will be several years before I really know.

I have another apple which was more your standard decent apple; its on the small side so overall not as exciting.

I had expected these apples to be more bland based on other reports I got, how most apple seedlings are not good. These two are perfectly fine apples. I have one more new variety that has yet to fully ripen.

A seedling peach is producing small peaches but they are unusually sweet. Its still young and I moved the tree this spring so I am hoping the peaches size up better in future years. I’m calling it Hufflepuff for no good reason other than it being the first word that popped into my head.

[marknmt]

One like for content, and one bonus (imaginary) like for “Hufflepuff”!

[BlueBerry]

I have a 5 year old seedling I dug up in someone’s flower bed…so that could really be a surprise when it fruits. My first thought was a yellow delicious seedling ….but the foliage has changed over time. Maybe next year it will bloom. (And if it’s no good, I’ll turn it into another “frankentree”).

And, I have a red crab seedling, and seedlings of Antonovka, EverCrisp, and Fuji.

BB

[scottfsmith]

I ate my last fruiting seedling apple, it was also pretty good; it was not yet ripe but still had good flavor and sweetness. I think it may have been a Newtown Pippin seedling. Overall I’m pleasantly surprised at how these seedling apples taste and it makes me wish I had a few more going.

[FarmGirl-Z6A]

@Drew51

I grew out a few seedlings of Indian free for fun. All three have fruit this year. None are ripe yet. Im netting them tomorrow.

@Drew51 I’d be interested in hearing about your experience. Did you plant the seeds in ground or? What year did you start the seeds? Also, once you taste them, I’d like to know what you think about the flavor.

[FarmGirl-Z6A]

How did that 5 year old seedling turn out?

[FarmGirl-Z6A]

@scottfsmith How is your Pineapple Gold doing? Any updates on your other fruit seedlings?

[danzeb]

Planted peach seeds from Zee Lady and Henry II in pots in 2016. Zee Lady seedling had a small fruit 2018. It was ok so I kept it. Some other seedlings where discarded. Only had a few fruit and they where small from potted plant. Took scion in 2020 and grafted to in ground tree. Picked 6 nice size fruit today put haven’t tasted them yet. Will in a few days and will report.

[Robert]

I’ve had several peach seedlings fruit. All had good tasting fruit, but were smaller.

[scottfsmith]

Boy I can’t exactly remember but I think it rotted too much. I removed it several years ago. I have about ten apple seedlings which are still to fruit. Some fruited last year and all were duds. Overall none of the apples have been too impressive, zero keepers so far.

[BlueBerry]

Thanks, FarmGirl. That seedling made large marble sized yellow fruits. I’ve put 3 or 4 other varieties on it successfully so far…it’s not a keeper unless you need a pollinator tree or like apple jelly from a yellow sour fruit. Not rust or scab resistant I don’t think. No fireblight.

However, a sister seedling, two actually, I gave to a neighbor father and son.
Both are very very disease free, (green healthy foliage no spray in August) and one has fruited 3x so far, and is certainly edible, though not an apple to want a bunch of. The other has not bloomed.

[BobVance]

@Robert

I’ve had several peach seedlings fruit. All had good tasting fruit, but were smaller.

I’ve had several peach seedlings produce fruit. Mostly because I feel bad about getting rid of the random seedlings that pop up. I’ve got a couple Heath Cling seedlings. The one which has fruited is identical to mom.

One of these rows is from the seedling, but I forgot which…

I also have a White Lady seedling. WL was growing in a pot and must have dropped some fruit. Fast forward ~5 years and the potted tree died (not a rare thing for me to forget about potted trees, especially in out of the way places) and the seedling is a full sized tree, which produced about 20 lbs of fruit this year.

Here are the last two, which I picked yesterday.

Everyone (wife, kids, parents, etc) seemed to really like it, but I think that is mostly because it was the only white peach which produced enough fruit that it made it into the house. I like it, but it wasn’t any better than Loring (already pretty good IMO). Everyone else disagreed and wanted more.

It did get more rot than the other peaches I was picking at this time. But, I think that is at least partially due to me forgetting about it. It’s gotten less pruning (to open things up), fewer fungicide sprays, and is growing partially under a (10’ tall) deck.

The seedling I’m most excited about is a jujube seedling. I’ve provisionally named it BV1, under the expectation that more will follow and they will get final names once I’ve got enough experience with it. I’ve got dozens of jujube seedlings (hundreds if you count new 6" tall seedlings), but have only sampled fruit from a handful so far. None of the others have been useful (tiny, sour, etc).

From the 3 fruit it produced last year, it is early ripening (just after Sugar Cane about the same as Autumn Beauty), crisp, sweet, and mid-sized or above.

It was planted in a pot in October 2016, then planted in ground a few years later (late 2018 or early 2019 to replace a PF1 peach which died). The mother was a So, which you can see in the zig-zag branch structure:

Both from the fruit and from genetic testing, it seems that the pollen parent was Mei Mi, which was a graft on the So (thanks to Scott in 2015) when the fruit was produced.

I cut the tree back hard for scionwood (from 4’ down to 2’). It’s now back to 6’ tall, but it looks like I made it skip producing this year. It’s also covered in huge thorns. They were sizable before I cut it back, but they seem about 2X as long now. Hopefully that is something which will settle down in time.

[Robert]

The peach seedlings I have seem to be really rot resistant compared to named varieties. Wonder if there is anything to that?

[smilemore]

My first seedling to fruit are the Loquat trees. All produce sweet to very sweet fruits. My other family prefer sour Loquats so that they can dip it into their home make sauce.

My 2nd tree to produce is the Texas Red Grapefruit. Sweet and tart flavor. Good size fruits, but it take over a year for the fruits to ripen. No wonder, Texas Red Grapefruit are so expensive in the store.

My 3rd tree to produce fruit are the Pomegranate trees. The fruits started green, then yellowish, and now turning blush pink for the 1st time. I’m very excited this year because of the size and maturity of the fruits. Likely, the taste will change this year.

My 4th tree to produce fruit are the apple trees. Both are crab apple and very small fruits. No luck, so grafting is the way to go from here.

My 5th tree to fruit are a couple of Pear trees. Good flavor profile and size. It’s promising so far.

My 6th plant to fruit is grape. Good flavor profile. Size is subjective for now as it’s the first time it fruited. At least it’s able to produce medium size grapes.

I’m still waiting for my Blood Orange, Guava, Mulberry, Lemon, more Apple, and more Pomegranate.

[Drew51]

I lost three seedlings to a spring freeze one year. Indian free x Arctic Glo. Then I lost Arctic Glo to flooding. I have replaced it as I love that fruit. In the meantime waiting for Glo to mature I just grew out random seeds. I removed from shell and kept in the fridge in moist paper towel. It about two months they sprouted and I planted and grew them inside under lights till spring. I think I did this in the 2020-2021 winter. One fruited last year but the squirrels got all of them. All three fruited this year third leaf. I have also a morus nigra seed from Bulgaria from a very famous tree there. It fruited in its 5th or sixth year ( this year). Awesome tree!
I plan to do the free x Glo cross in the next couple of years again. That’s what I really wanted to do.
I have also crossed various raspberries and have red, black, and even purple seedlings. My main interest is rubus breeding. The purple is primocane fruiting and tasted like boysenberries. So awesome and cool. The first primocane fruiting purple I ever heard of. That gene came from Niwot black raspberry. This was a volunteer cross found in my garden. I didn’t intentionally try to cross black and red. It came up in a pot with a black currant. The robins planted the seed. Probably from my crossed black raspberries which produce blacks the size of quarters. Niwot died four years ago, but I was able to make these crosses before it did. Fantastic results. I also bred a pink raspberry crossing a yellow with a red. I was hoping for orange fruit but got pink.

[danzeb]

I sampled my Zee Lady seedling this morning. I only have 3 peach trees - Redhaven, Zee Lady seedling and Henry II seedling. Redhaven had not been good the past 3 years. Probably a weather problem. The Zee Lady seedling I picked yesterday was very good and we’ve had rainy and cloudy weather so It’s a keeper for me.
I discarded the Henry II seedlings except for one that may be a keeper. It’s not ripe yet.
Zee Lady seedling:

[Richard]

@danzeb
Looks like a keeper to me.

[scottfsmith]

It looks like my Victoria graft is in fact the rootstock, it just fruited and it is a small white fleshed peach. Based on the pit and taste it might be an Oldmixon seedling, the taste is very similar. It is a great peach other than the size, I will probably keep it.

[BobVance]

@BobVance

Mostly because I feel bad about getting rid of the random seedlings that pop up. I’ve got a couple Heath Cling seedlings. The one which has fruited is identical to mom.

Here’s the 2nd Heath Cling seedling, before and after I pruned it to stay mostly within ladder’s reach. It’s bad when the trees reach the 3rd story…

The fruit on it still isn’t ripe, and based on the appearance it looks like I may have another Heath Cling clone. I probably won;t have an issue with too many Heath Cling though. At least not from this tree. The squirrels have taken almost all the other stone fruit from this site. But they mostly ignore the mother HC and the other seedling at the other location, so I should still get some early October fruit.

Speaking of the other site, I found a 3rd HC seedling…I guess I need to find a place for it next winter.

If you look closely on the ground, you’ll see a bunch of old peach pits…

[evilpaul]

My asian pear seedling I grew from a grocery store asian pear. Started growing in February and was planted out…in June…I think? It got a little sunburned on some of the lower leaves. I’ve neglected spraying for a while and I think it’s getting the pear version of marsonnia leaf blotch (or whatever they’re calling it now).