I germinated about 50 Jonagold seedling this spring. I know that Jonagold apples are triploids and the pollen is sterile. I gave most of them away and was wondering the chances of the seedlings being triploids. The reason for the question is that a person who took 2 of the seedlings to plant for a food plot for deer doesn’t have any apple trees within a couple of miles.
Here is a picture of a few that I kept.
We have a huge pill bottle the wife and kids are filling with seeds from whatever apples we got in. I have a little dry pad set out for after I give them a bleach wash. About September I will chunk them into the fridge.
I’m guessing I will use most as rootstock before they fruit. But I will pull any early fruiters for further investigating if they do fruit. Pretty sure they are all diploid varieties though.
these would have been pollinated by a diploid apple so I don’t know if there would be some triploids or because they were crossed with a diploid, they wouldn’t be triploid. I would hate for him to wait 7 to 10 years for them to flower and still not get any fruit. I told him to graft another variety on it, but he said that he doesn’t graft. I had a couple of rome seedlings and told him to take one of them too, but he said that he only had room for 2 apples.
Yeap. For best results 2 diploid Pollination Group 4/D apples would perfect. Though I would use Shockley as one {PG3} due to it’s insane attraction to pollinator insects. And high pollen production.
I was planning on letting mine grow out to see what I got before changing them over to something else. Might be something good and can always change it later.
As far as I understand, it’s rare for Triploid seeds to grow, so you’re doing well, Triploid trees need to be pollinated by two trees to form seeds, and probably is needed for fruiting too.
The seeds will ALL be Triploid, but not necessarily grow, since they grew, you should keep an eye on them for good bearing varieties.
If you can get a Clark’s Crabapple or redflesh apples to pollinate it would be interesting to cross them. Maybe you should try more seedlings and hand pollinate?
The germination % was very high for me. Most of the seed I planted had already sprouted in the refrigerator before I planted them. So that is probably why so many of them came up.
Hopefully your friend is calling the trees something other than Jonagold or even Jonagold seedlings.
That’s a misunderstanding. The reason it’s recommended to plant two diploid varieties with a triploid for pollination is not that the triploid needs two. It only needs one diploid variety for pollination. The second diploid tree is to pollinate the other diploid so that you don’t only get fruit on the triploid since it won’t pollinate either diploid.
He just wants them for deer apples. They are going to be planted on a mountain.
Yes I understand about triploids. Thank you for making sure.
If it’s for the deer, they will enjoy them with or without fruit. Deer love to eat the leaves from apple trees.
Yeah, when the apples make the branches hang down the deer eat the leaves and leave the apples 
I hope he puts deer proof cages around them until the limbs are above what the deer can reach or he won’t have any trees at all.
Thanks for your answer and since you know more than I do on the subject: I found two seedlings with 3 cotyledons in my apple seedlings that I’m growing, does that mean they’re tricots? Or is it possible they’re just strangely developed seed leaves?
The seedling are from Pink Lady, a few from Modi, and another unidentified apple that tastes a lot like Pink Lady with the size and texture of a Honey Crisp.
The possible parent apple, but they could also be Modi or Cripp’s Pink seedlings.
The extra cotyledon is just an accident which happened when the seed was forming, just like how sometimes a plant than normally has leaves in pairs of two will accidentally start making sets of three instead. It is not likely to be an indicator of anything.
