I’ve been checking the apple trees that I come across while out walking/riding and I’m seeing a huge variety of sizes/colours/tastes/textures in the fruit.
A worrysomely large fraction produce things that look like apples but taste like sour-water-leaves.
I have long term access to an area of forest near Pigeon Lake, and had hoped to start a few dozen trees there. But what I see makes me worry that most of the seeds I could find will produce trees that are useless as fruit producers.
Other than arranging for my next couple of paycheques to be direct-deposited at Golden Acres, how do I get my hands on a few dozen seedlings that can both survive our climate and produce a bit of edible fruit?
It doesn’t have to bear big, or bear many, just something that won’t die in the winter and makes something that people and deer would enjoy.
Or are all apple trees hit and miss, with most making Blech and the few good ones being grafted around to everyone else’s rootstock?
Going from memory here, apple trees do not polinate true. This means what you grow from seed is literally whatever was in the air at the moment the tree was polinated. Apples are grafted onto rootstock to make the new apple tree that is the same as "the one grandpa had that was just the best tree ever".
New apple varieties are a random event by growing seeds from scratch. "Granny Smith" or "Fuji" or whatever are all grafted clones, in other words.
So the large variety I’m seeing comes from all the trees that either were allowed to grow naturally, or where the grafted stock is not the part that made the apples I tried?
That makes sense. One that was hanging over the fence of a very well cared for yard had great apples. Most of the old scruffy ones were not.
So I can plant as many as my budget (for 2x4 mesh fence) allows, and later graft onto the ones that show a vigorous stem/root with branches from something healthy that makes edible fruit. Cool.
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This country was started by voyagers whose young lives were swept away by the currents of the rivers for ten cents a day... just for the vanity of the European's beaver hats. ~ Red Bullets
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It is when you walk alone in nature that you discover your strengths and weaknesses. ~ Red Bullets
I’d guess that cuttings would work for most fruit trees. Propagation through cuttings is easy.
In Edmonton you can even find old Macintosh apple trees and lots of other great apples.
Many may be grafts but i would still love to experiment to see what might come up. Years ago I started dozens of Laurel Leaf Willow from cuttings stuck in cutdown milk cartons. Its really easy. With root start hormone i’d guess that most fruit tree cuttings could be propagated. I’ve seen a lot of video headlines on starting apples from seeds (even those apples bought in stores). Haven’t watched any.
A couple years ago a friend gave me 40 or so bur oak acorns and so I did the float test per an online video and half passed this viability test so I planted those in a tray of tiny plant containers. Then I thought, i’d just stick all the duds in with the good ones that passed the test. 90% if the supposed duds grew too!
A few decades back an elderly friend of the family started and grew Horse Chesnut trees from chestnuts he collected from an old tree in downtown Edmonton. Last i saw them (almost 20 yrs ago) they were surviving just fine and were getting really big.
Last edited by KinAlberta; 09-27-2020 at 07:44 AM.
Apple trees in the woods
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