I let an M26 rootstock in an unfavorable location, with lots of root suckers, flower and fruit this year. It held 3 or 4 fruit to near maturity. I pulled one, maybe a month ago. It wasn’t ripe yet, but had an unpleasantly bitter flavor. So I didn’t bother tasting the remaining fruit which may have dropped.
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Any updates to share on that big leaved seedling?
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Obviously not every seedling is worth saving, but may good ones have obviously been discarded over the years. Especially by the commercially-subsidized university breeding programs.
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@BlueBerry
What the universities look for is red, big, good keeping apples often times above even taste because they sell. I want apples that taste good. If an apple is 2" I’m ok with that. Same goes for pears.
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I want to try grafting seedlings in 2022 to potentially combat disease. Which apples are these? You are showing 3 of Clarks apples, but I don’t know what you had for scion last year.
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“Clark’s Crab” is the best and the one discussed here.
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Glad to hear these are doing so well Mike. This is the little red Ive mentioned before but it’s still not a heavy producer like my crabapple you mentioned above. That crabapple is the best apple I’ve seen. Im not just saying that because it came from my orchard. Have a feeling some of these seedlings will be around much longer than me. I posted a few more photos here Seedling Apples for cider
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For those of you who have grown apples from seed: at what point do disease resistant characteristics begin to show? Reason that I ask is that I am looking for relatively disease resistant varieties and several of my 5 inch tall seedlings started this year show mildew problems. Are these worth babying along or will this be a lifelong problem even as they mature?
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Normally I intentionally expose them to diseases like fireblight by brushing an infected branch over the top of them. They won’t get more disease resistant so might as well know up front.
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Clark can you share your methods of propagation by seed? I tried last year from a local tree but it didn’t work out and didn’t produce again this year well enough for me to harvest anything.
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Propagation by seed is very easy i literally spread out the seed and cover with an 1/2 -1 inch or so of dirt. They come up through the dirt. No cold stratification needed with apple. Take it from the apple stick it in dirt. They do very good if ashes are introduced to the dirt. Back in the old days everyone smoked. My idea of fertlizer in my childhood was dumping every ash tray on my little apple trees back then. They smoked at home, in the car, on airplanes , at work, there was plenty of ashes. The apples grew like weeds. I grew any apple seed back then.
Peaches grow easy as well. My mom would have hundreds of peach pits. She pealed peaches making cobblers she then through out those pits in an old tractor tire. She would dump cold ashes from our trash barrel on those pits. She burned paper and needed a place to dump ash. Every pit must have grown. It was like magic we were very blessed whatever we touched grew like that. All these years later my methods have not chsnged much.
Remember my mom was playing the long game with nature. She through pits right on the top of the grounds buried them in ashes from burning paper. The next spring she had little peach trees. Winter is needed with a peach to crack the pit. You could crack it yourself but i dont.
In my case i planted apple seeds in no time i had apple seedlings growing. It wont even take a month.
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Love the backstory and I was thinking they needed cold stratification so that was maybe where I went wrong. Gotta try this with some beautiful Envy apples that I just picked up for practice
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Can we revisit this question? Does anyone have any answers/experience?
I ordered a few Antonovka whips for this spring, I plan to just let them grow to maturity. I live in a very harsh climate and from my reading these are very hardy trees. Can somone compare the fruit to a better known apple for me?
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I think that there are a number of variations and sub-selections of Antonovka, but I grow this one for fruit, and I agree with Neil’s description: it’s excellent. It’s one of our best pie apples, a great keeper, and we enjoy it fresh as well. If I had to compare it to a better-known apple, I’d say that it has some similarity to GoldRush.
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Perhaps next year I’ll have a first apple from an Antonovka rootstock…it’s 8’ by 8’ and a bit droopy tipped. I have several others that I’ve not grafted that I bought a number of years ago and in pots they’ve not gotten very big. One has reddish leaves. Obviously, there is considerable variation. Beyond that’, I’m still being patient for some fruit.
I’ve had intentions to let B-9 and B-118 fruit, but so far have grafted everything instead of letting it fruit.
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Of the 3 seedlings from this old post, one appears to be Golden Hornet x Y.D (and I have made it into a multi-graft tree), one appears to be a Red Delicious seedling, apples not much bigger than golf ball though pretty to look at, and the third I grafted over before it fruited.
Have several seedlings currently, but none ready to bear.
This includes Niedz. seedlings.
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Fruit from a seedling Antonovka purchased from St. Lawrence Nursery. The size of a crabapple. Has fruited for several years now and drops in August. Very Astringent.
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Is that the size of the apple when it is ripe?
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Yes
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Well this thread and a few others gave me enough encouragement to try a few seedling apples out. I’m trying 10 of them from a chestnut apple that I had at a local nursery. They were there for pollination yet were better than any apple they offered we thought. For some reason I feel like my odds of getting an apple worth keeping will be higher with a crab than say a honeycrisp. Not sure if I read that somewhere or made it up in my head. Anyways, the plan is to move them into 2 or 3 gallon pots in a month and bury them by the garden, maybe i would be better off puting them in their permanent spots out back with plenty of mulch and protection. I’ve had a bad experience losing plants in pots by missing a watering in the middle of summer, burying might give me a little leeway.
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