growing apples from seeds vs. cloning

SueinWA wrote:
Paul, if you haven't read it already, find Robert Kourik's book Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally (1986/2005).  He's got a section in there about grafting fruit trees, root stocks, etc.

It's in the library system.

Sue

paul wheaton wrote:
Antnovka:  Are you saying that most of these rootstocks come from seed?

So, if I go out and plant my cameo seeds, maybe half of them will get to be a foot tall in a year.  I could then kill off the wimps.  And supposing that I planted 20 spots with six seeds each, and I kept one seedling in each of the 20 spots, I would get 20 different trees.  The fruit from each tree would probably be quite different and three of them might be kinda like lame cameo apples.  Half of them would probably be just awful (pithy, or mealy, or flavorless, or riddled with disease, or ...).  I could then graft stuff onto these trees.  It would be just as good as grafting onto an Antanovka seedling?    (and while this looks like a long series of statements, I really mean it to be a long series of questions, so I'll add my question marks here)

10-12 years to fruit, eh?  I'm guessing that's 10-12 years to being able to get a respectable/useful crop, right?  Maybe in five years it will throw off three apples?  And in eight years it might have 20 apples?

lkz5ia wrote:
Any wild seedling apple I've ate, has tasted good to quench my thirst and hunger.

Susan Monroe wrote:
May I assume that most/all of the apples available these days are hybrids?  Were the apple of 100 -200 years ago hybrids by then, too?  What about the Antanovka?

Sue

Leah Sattler wrote:
I knew that transplanted trees tend to have damaged taproots. I thought you were saying that grafting on to one somehow prevents it from "tapping" certainly most rootstock undergoes transplanting at some point. so the thing to do would be to plant those seeds and graft a desirable variety to it right? how closely related do they need to be? or do they? I have seen frankentrees that have several varietys grafted on to the same tree (not that I want to do that) but that suggests they are pretty interchangable.

paul wheaton wrote:
I now have over 100 varieties of apple seeds.  With a focus on large fruit and winter keepers. 

If anybody has any really excellent winter keeper apples, I would trade a permies mug for 200 seeds.

To identify an unknown apple there is absolutely no substitute to taking the apple and showing it to people and asking, "Do you know what type apple this is?" In this era of DNA classification and computer data bases I know that this sounds old fashioned and out of date, but actually there is no substitute. Here is some background information which should be of help. Apples in the United States can be divided into three groups:

[li]Modern Apples which originated in 1930 or later. [/li]
[li]Known Heritage Apples such as the Virginia Beauty, Grimes Golden, or Wolf River which are old, but have been continuously cultivated and have never been lost. There are a few hundred of these. [/li]
[li]Lost Heritage Apples which were known before 1930, but now can not be found. [/li]

If you have any commercial apple growers in your area, you should show your unknown apple to them. They probably can identify it if the apple is a Modern Apple or one of the more common Known Heritage Apples. Also frequently there were many similar apple trees in a given community. An elderly friend or neighbor might know the apple name. If it was a well distributed local variety, showing the apple to no more than six elderly people should result in its identification. You can also show the apple to older people at area stores where "locals" hang out. This way you can frequently get the opinions of two to six people at the same time.

Apples can vary greatly in shape and color even on the same tree. Thus when you show people apples for identification you should show them four to six apples. You will be asking people to remember from many years ago, so you should have the very best apples to show them. The apples should be of representative color and size, plus they should be properly ripe. If you need more certainty of the identification, then you should get more than one person to identify the apple.

The final group of apples is the Lost Heritage Apples. This group is very extensive. There could have easily been forty thousand apples with names in the United States. Some of these had a very extensive distribution over several states, while others were only known in a very small area. For identification of these apples there are old apple descriptive texts and historical nursery catalogs. Even if there is a written description of the apple, it is almost always not in sufficient detail to allow a positive identification. Two recently found apples were described in the old literature as "oblong". In reality only one apple out of eight was oblong. Thus the old written descriptions are frequently not very precise, but they also can be misleading. Actually many of the apples in the Lost group have no written descriptions at all.

Still the very best way of identifying the Lost Heritage Apples is to show them to an elderly neighbor and ask them, "Do you know what type apple this is?" The written apple descriptions can help confirm the local person's identification. One good source for apple identification is 'Old Southern Apples' by Creighton Lee Calhoun.

crtreedude wrote:
Most trees don't have taproots which I am sure you all know. And, those that do, will often regrow them, but probably be branched, which isn't a problem. What is interesting is that you won't generally find a tap root on an older tree. It is to the trees interest to spread out the roots to look for nutrients, not reach the center of the earth! And older tree that has a taproot when young will often resemble a tree without a taproot as it grows older and is better established.

Young trees that grow up fast need tap roots so they don't fall over as they are establishing their root systems, but after a while, the side roots grow large, even to having buttresses as well.

So, if you fear your apple trees don't have a taproot due to damage, pruning, etc. tie them up. You will achieve most of what the tap root does.

Brenda Groth wrote:
Paul, so are you going to "start" your seeds out in the property rather than in pots or a nursery bed to prevent losing the tap root then?

Brenda Groth wrote:
I did want to tell you that our snow apples ripened really late but when they did they were wonderful.. this is our oldest "seed" apple tree..we had more apples on this tree this year than it has ever had before..am thinking about pruning out some of the center to get more light and air into the tree this spring

paul wheaton wrote:
ctreedude,

In that case, it seems that in a dry-ish area, a lot of trees that start with a taproot, might keep their taproot if the taproot finds deep water.  But if you water that tree in the summer, it might lose its taproot. 

And, this could be true of apple trees started from seed.

Brenda Groth wrote:
so i would guess you should get them on Monday

crtreedude wrote:
after a few years dig down and see what is happening. I know I would. 

paul wheaton wrote:
So .....  dig up the whole tree?  Or dig up enough to try and find the tap root?

Brenda Groth wrote:the tree blossoms later and bears later than all our other trees...

Wow, that sounds like it could be tremendously useful, both for bees and to spread out the labor of harvesting/window of you-pick operations.