Free seeds being generously offered to UK residents (only) that were part of Karim’s breeding program. Wish I qualified.
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Karim sent them out last night and mine arrived today. A cross of two promising early varieties. I hope I can keep them alive long enough to see what the fruit is like!
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I’m so glad you were able to secure some seeds. I really enjoy his very honest youtube videos. Cheers!
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Yes He has a nice collection of videos, his calm demeanor is easy to digest and he loves his russets.
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Yes, I enjoy both his careful sit-down tastings and the more freewheeling tour-of-the-mother-trees type videos. I really like the way that even when he’s trying to be serious he often fails and bursts out laughing.
It’s an impressive nursery with one of the widest ranges of fruit tree cultivars available here. He seems to be taking quite a brave step that, in addition all the varieties he can offer, he’s going to breed new ones and is making quite a serious investment (that new greenhouse can’t have come cheap). I really hope it works out for him.
Besides getting free seeds this year I ordered and have received a few trees including Primrose Pippin. I’m looking forward to seeing how it grows on this side of the country.
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I was grateful to get some seeds posted from Karim also. 8/10 were already germinating happily.
I had already made a lil propagation rack up in a neglected segment of kitchen counter for some of Steven Edholms seeds so while they are stratifying these can join the brassicas I already had going to try it out.
The seeds from Karim are wickson x primrose pippin which is lovely as I also have a primrose pippin ordered from Keepers Nursery this season also.
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Sounds like you have some exciting apple seeds for the season!
I’ve started a post about Edholm’s crosses if you want to update folks on how those are doing!
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@GrumpyPantsPlants already bookmarked 
That sounds a great cross. I finally managed to get a graft of Wickson going last year but obviously no fruit yet.
I got Bethan x Julia. I can’t find much out about Julia other than Riverford and Abel&Cole seem to sell them as organic, so maybe Karim crossed it for disease resistance.
My growing situation isn’t quite as professional as yours. Maybe I need some grow lights…
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Same, I have a young wickson on mm106 here at home in our very diddy garden. But in the cooler north west mm106 hopefully is kept in check with some training to keep the vigour at bay.
The lights are just something I had about from a years ago phase of learning how led grow lights worked back when you had to DIY it a bit more to get anything actually useful. These are 3000k Samsung lm301b strips on a meanwell HLG120-48A power supply.
There’s 8/10 up above the soil now, a few needed the seed husk gently peeling off but no casualties there.
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I had a fairly low success rate for my seeds last year, I did several quince and a few of a redfleshed apple that was gifted alongside an order of trees from “Yorkshire apples” over near York/Pickering I believe. Out of those only one apple got to around 80cm of growth, the rest were quite small. This was just from a couple of months in the fridge followed by being left to germinate outside sharing a random 3L pot. This is my first time using lights with them.
I’ve also got the timer running 6am to 10pm so 16 hours on, 8 off.
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Nice to see they’re coming up! It’s so dull here at the moment that I have put my seedlings under a desk lamp. I think as Bethan is an early apple the seedlings I had received had more stratification so they were more advanced when they got here:
One week later, they’re just starting to form the first true leaves.
I’ve got them under an old desk lamp at the moment, though I put them in the window during days when we have some sun forecast. I have a sample LED downlight from work, 4000K / 1150lm, that I might try to rig up over them.
Fingers crossed, I’ve never had any problem getting apple seeds to germinate outside in pots through the winter. The mice are scared away by all the cats around here. I have struggled to get any of them to grow anything like 2m in their first year, mostly only about 25cm (10"). I’d be very pleased with 80 cm in one year! Maybe these will show that it’s possible to get a head start in the winter.
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Apples that I’ve started early in the winter seem to have the best survival rates that spring after being planted outside. I hope this is true for you as well!
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what are the dimensions of these pots? are they one unit and sitting in a 1020 tray? do you have a link to where you got them?
Hi @kinghat they are from a UK company called containerwise. Each base tray is about 9.5"x15" so a little smaller. They are about 15cm/6" high.
The cells give 0.5L of roots pace which is nice. I have the next size down (28 cells) ready for the skillcult seeds order I did as there will be many more.
They do some other forestry propagation trays with a bigger footprint too.
Proptek do a 10x20 new tray which had 8x 12" deep air pruning pots which looked amazing for growing out large numbers of fruit trees from seed.
Unfortunately I emailed the UK distributor and they’re only just being manufactured and the minimum order is 1 pallets worth.
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Karim has actually put another post up offering more seeds as he’s reached his limit of space to grow indoors…
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I’m so tempted but I think I have also reached my limit of space for this year. Are you going to ask for more?
I messaged saying there’s 5 cells left in that tray but could maybe start another tray if they desperately needed planting. There’s also an order coming from keepers nursery this week which I’m quite excited about and have been mixing potting soil in earnest this week in readiness for.
I also got a bit mm106 vigour paranoid and grafted the two laterally trained growing tips of my wickson to a g213 rootstock (small m9 sized Geneva) each side… If the growth goes crazy I can always nip the mm106 off 
I don’t mind another small number as the post from Cali takes a while it seems then will need 2-3 months stratification and I am nothing if not overeager.
As an aside the trees I’ve got coming from Keepers nursery are:
Karmijn de sonnaville m9
Primrose pippin g202
Hamids red pippin g202
Young america m9 (redflesh large crab)
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He did message to say he’s got plenty of people messaging who haven’t had some sent already 
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Happy set of wickson x Primrose pippin. They’re by a slightly ajar window getting a breezy draught so hopefully build some resilience to staying upright without needing a fan blowing around. Although it is chillier and the Pak choi sharing the same shelf tier as the apple seedlings are markedly smaller than the pak choi above in a warmer tier.
They’re getting there though and happy enough. 19 days since they arrived.
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