qwerty
Member
Yep, it's on Netflix too....truly amazing insights to nature.
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Any Fruit tree growers in here
- Thread starter lidspinner
- Start date
Yep, it's on Netflix too....truly amazing insights to nature.
The Peach would most likely grow into a tree as good or nearly as good as the one it came from.
You may be able to grow the Apple into a tree, but the fruit it bears will most likely be very different from the mother.
Generally, the seeds from pit fruit will probably grow into good trees, seeds from Pears/Apples will make varied trees with unknown fruit quality.
Simple fruit like Grapes, figs, and Olives were the first to be domesticated, because they are more or less stable, and can be grown from seed reliably.
Fruit like Apples, pears, citrus were not successfully domesticated and farmed until grafting(tree cloning) was invented in China thousands of years ago. A cutting from a established "mother tree" who had desirable characteristics would be grafted to a root stock from a hardy tree of the same species. This allowed orchardists to propagate large quantities of reliable trees, its exactly the same idea behind modern clone usage in Cannabis.
These days, some form of cloning or grafting is used for all fruit trees/vines, even the simple ones that were first domesticated with out it.
WeedChuck
Member
How much the apple will vary from its mother depends on what variety of apple you get your seeds from. The old joke was that you could plant a Macintosh apple seed and get a rose bush. Well not quite, but you might get mostly trees that would bear sub quality fruit with only a good one in a hundred. If you were to plant seeds of a more modern apple that presumably has more generations of good quality parents behind it, you'll get a much higher percentage of keepers in a given size batch. Some of the varieties from New Zealand and Israel might be good candidates.
lidspinner
Member
man this is some great discussion.....please keep it up.. If I live in Ohio, where would you think I should purchase from? a nursery from the south of me? or to the north? I know the nurserys have zone requirements for each fruit tree but I am kind of thinking it still might be a little adapted to where its been "grafted" and grown until shipped for sale.....maybe I am over thinking it to much....
I like Gurneys but they only have the standard variety of all fruit trees, which is only 2-4 feet tall, bare rootball................whereas some other nurseries I have found have fruit trees that are 6-7 foot tall and already fruiting....I am sure the fruit is minimal but still further advanced in years...more money, but older tree.
If Gurneys would sell those older trees I would be all over them.....
does anyone have a specific site that they order from?
Great ideas from everyone. Just another topic I intend to research till I am blue so I can get one step further to self sustainable living. thanks for everyones input.
I like Gurneys but they only have the standard variety of all fruit trees, which is only 2-4 feet tall, bare rootball................whereas some other nurseries I have found have fruit trees that are 6-7 foot tall and already fruiting....I am sure the fruit is minimal but still further advanced in years...more money, but older tree.
If Gurneys would sell those older trees I would be all over them.....
does anyone have a specific site that they order from?
Great ideas from everyone. Just another topic I intend to research till I am blue so I can get one step further to self sustainable living. thanks for everyones input.
You would still be searching for a needle in a haystack as far as finding a tree that bears fruit that you would want to eat. Many fruits tend to be true breeding, apples are on the complete opposite end of that spectrum. You plant hundreds of seeds to find one apple tree that produces good edible fruit. The vast majority will produce fruit best suited to be feed apples. Buy grafted stock, its the only way to ensure that the fruit will be good.
Quick
Member
Peach trees for orchards in BC are grafted onto dwarf stock of other fruits to keep the trees short and accessible....
Check agriculture Canada's website....
yes, and to add; the reason why many growers rely on grafts is because they don't have the time to grow a bunch of fruit trees from seed and select the best and breed with those and also graft from them.
most fruit producers are like commercial herb growers, they want something they know how it will produce, no surprises, no time nor space nor resources for selective breeding and finding keepers and new phenos etc...
I got lucky with a tangerine tree from seed, produces amazingly tasty and juicy tangerines.
"You would still be searching for a needle in a haystack as far as finding a tree that bears fruit that you would want to eat." Yes, zenoonez but my point is that the haystack would be considerably smaller with a modern apple variety.
Everyone knows about the old 'can't grow a good apple from seed' story, it's one of the most commonly told story in horticulture, you'll literally hear it from every nursuryman. Like most knowledge, there's a thread of truth in it, but also some baloney. We have a choice of believing the stories, or going out and looking for ourselves. In some parts of the US and Canada there are 'feral' apple trees in what are now wild areas that were obviously (no graft scars) grown from seed. There are also many unique seed grown apples in residential areas. One of my neighbors here in SoCal has four different seedling apples in his back yard. 2 look to be from 'beverly hills' and 2 from 'yellow delicious' seeds, that much can be inferred from their looks, but beyond that we can only guess. I very much doubt that these 4 seedlings were 'culled' from a larger grow by an amature apple breeder, I think they represent the entire sample. It's interesting that not only are they all good eating apples, but they all bear fruit in our low chill climate. Not a graft scar in the bunch!
Everyone knows about the old 'can't grow a good apple from seed' story, it's one of the most commonly told story in horticulture, you'll literally hear it from every nursuryman. Like most knowledge, there's a thread of truth in it, but also some baloney. We have a choice of believing the stories, or going out and looking for ourselves. In some parts of the US and Canada there are 'feral' apple trees in what are now wild areas that were obviously (no graft scars) grown from seed. There are also many unique seed grown apples in residential areas. One of my neighbors here in SoCal has four different seedling apples in his back yard. 2 look to be from 'beverly hills' and 2 from 'yellow delicious' seeds, that much can be inferred from their looks, but beyond that we can only guess. I very much doubt that these 4 seedlings were 'culled' from a larger grow by an amature apple breeder, I think they represent the entire sample. It's interesting that not only are they all good eating apples, but they all bear fruit in our low chill climate. Not a graft scar in the bunch!
Bearing fruit is not the measure of a good apple tree. There are hundreds of apple trees growing in my area that were started from seed on the farms that used to make up the majority of the land around here. Not one of them has what I would call "good" fruit on it. Most are what we call "crab apples" in my area which really just denotes that they aren't great eating apples or cider apples. Has there likely been bottlenecking in the genes of apples from being raised close to one another generation after generation? Probably but the fact still remains that apples have vastly divergent fruit when grown from seed unless you are working with a ge apple. My point is that if you don't want to spend 15 years finding a good apple tree go get grafted stock. If you want that challenge then go ahead and sow seeds, there are bound to be a couple good trees in there.
But, bearing delicious eating apples like my friends' is a 'measure of a good apple tree' right? Good, just wanted to make sure. You've sampled the fruit from hundreds of seedling apple trees around your area? That's pretty impressive. I'm sorry that they were all 'crab apples', maybe it's the bottlenecking! I can see when I'm overmatched. I'm going to have to politely bow out of this one and leave the table to you zenoonez.
Quick
Member
I should add that I believe this is also because the root-stock handles frosts better than the peach tree does....
Your looking at at least 4-5 years before it starts producing fruit ,seeds will make fruit.Some plants never produce fruit...
It depends on what your purpose is, if feeding yourself apples is the purpose then bearing delicious eating apples makes it a better tree than if it did not. Most of the trees I was talking about are planted amongst cow fields or more often, what was formerly cow fields for the cows. The cows like them enough to break all the lower branches off to get them. As to sampling fruit from apple trees, I have sampled thousands of wild fruit trees in my years of hiking. There are some nice sweet wonderful apples out there as well as peaches and others that were likely grown from seed but in my experience I have only come across a few apple trees that bore good eating fruit and they bore very small fruit generally. The apple is simply a very diverse genetic plant, it would be like if any pair of human mating could produce an asian, black, white, eskimo, offspring regardless of the mother and father plant. It really is an amazing plant. Think about pheno hunting with mj except you could run into anything in a given set of seeds.
Bumble Buddy
Active member
I grew some great key lime trees from grocery store limes. They actually are a byproduct of my cannabis garden 
; I was using lime juice from fresh sqeezed limes for pH down, some of the seeds eventually germinated in the pot pots and I let them grow there after harvesting the buds. About 4 or 5 years later they started bearing fruit which is great, better than the ones at the store. I later learned that lime trees are among the rare fruits that tend to "breed true" from seed, I heard that many commercial fruit varieties are pollinated by known specialized cultivars that promote heavy fruit setting, but will mostly result in not as desireable seedlings.
; I was using lime juice from fresh sqeezed limes for pH down, some of the seeds eventually germinated in the pot pots and I let them grow there after harvesting the buds. About 4 or 5 years later they started bearing fruit which is great, better than the ones at the store. I later learned that lime trees are among the rare fruits that tend to "breed true" from seed, I heard that many commercial fruit varieties are pollinated by known specialized cultivars that promote heavy fruit setting, but will mostly result in not as desireable seedlings.
Jazz are very nice apples. I actually like grapples my self. Tend to be my favorite thing to reach for for the past couple of months.
check your local county extension office. mine is having a tree sale in a couple of weeks.
Great discussion. Love the bickering by all of the amateur botanists (or who knows 'professional' botanists)! The Botany of Desire is a great call, I haven't seen the PBS version but the book blew my mind. It specifically answers the apple question. I grow key lime, bears lime, lemon, grapefruit, orange and banana. I would love to have a shot at apples or plums but it is too damn hot here. Good luck with your fruit tree grow, it would be great to keep this thread going.
