Super cheap perennial fruit plants by growing them from seed and cuttings!

I found a wild plum sapling about 8 feet tall on my property in a really good spot near one of my pecans. I never would have spotted it until it bloomed becsuse it was smack dab in the middle of a dense thicket of young ash trees and greenbriar. It took about 2 hours of work with machete and loppers, but now it's a free-standing plum tree loaded with barely-visible set fruit conveniently at eye level.

I also transplanted a wild plum about 5 feet tall from deep in my zone 5 (where it was stunted as a crowded understory plant) to the middle of my nascent zone 2 orchard. It's kept its leaves so far, keeping fingers crossed.

From off the property I transplanted several sand plums last fall (one leafed this spring, others got browsed) and a bunch more this spring. Also a roadside sucker from a gorgeous crab apple tree (this transplant is suffering as its independent roots were minimal).

I am doing well too with germinated persimmon seeds. And several bits of Kieffer pear new growth prunings are currently teasing me with vigorous leaf growth as cuttings, though it's too soon to know if they are actually rooting.

Dan Boone wrote:I also transplanted a wild plum about 5 feet tall from deep in my zone 5 (where it was stunted as a crowded understory plant) to the middle of my nascent zone 2 orchard. It's kept its leaves so far, keeping fingers crossed.

IIRC, when Sepp Holzer transplants, he digs up the tree, then waits for the leaves to fall off (or prunes heavily, not sure ), then plants it. I seem to recall that it helps to make the transplant do better homehow by stressing it, and removing the leaves limits transpiration.

Dan Boone wrote:I am doing well too with germinated persimmon seeds.

I'm interested to see how this goes. I bought American persimmon seeds from Oikos and am cold-stratifying. Will plant in mid to late May. Did you have to stratify? What was your seed source and germination rate?

Cam Mitchell wrote:
IIRC, when Seep Holzer transplants, he digs up the tree, then waits for the leaves to fall off (or prunes heavily, not sure :? ), then plants it. I seem to recall that it helps to make the transplant do better homehow by stressing it, and removing the leaves limits transpiration.

He does that in summer, but is careful to keep the roots from drying out. Once the leaves are gone, they won't use any of the tree's stored energy reserves, which can be devoted solely to reestablishing roots. After that happens, the plant will grow new foliage that will then have roots to support it. It's not necessary when the tree is dormant.

We observed pretty much that exact effect with a rose bush last summer. We were having some major landscaping work done - a large area of 150 year old stone paving was lifted, excavated and reset with proper foundations. In the process they had to dig out some old traditional rose bushes (50+ year old plants).

We saved one.

It was shoved in a pot by the contractors and promptly looked like it was on the way out. It dropped all it's leaves and looked like it was a gonner. I figured there was nothing to lose so cut it back to a trunk about 12 inches high. This spring it is going gang busters... new growth bursting all over it, hundreds of new shoots.

If I have to move a similarly established plant again I'll probably do much the same - butcher the above ground growth back to match the remaining root system.

Cam Mitchell wrote:

Dan Boone wrote:I am doing well too with germinated persimmon seeds.

I'm interested to see how this goes. I bought American persimmon seeds from Oikos and am cold-stratifying. Will plant in mid to late May. Did you have to stratify? What was your seed source and germination rate?

I have wild persimmons here but they are all in my Zone 5, and I want some trees closer. So, last fall when I was eating them, I just cleaned the seeds well with my mouth and spit them into a cup, where they dried.

I shoved some of the seeds into the soil that was still in my container garden containers late in the fall, hoping they would stratify and germinate in the spring. Like an idiot, I made no markers and kept no records.

I also put some in the fridge in a moist container to cold-stratify through the winter. In early spring I tried to germinate these in soil in my house under lights and with heat, mostly to no effect.

So I thought I had failed utterly. I gave up on those efforts, recycled the soil into my common tub that I use to fill my garden containers, and went about my normal planting business. In the process, I forgot that I had put a lot of seeds into the containers into the fall, so I recycled all that soil as well, the way I do every year.

So now that the soil is warming up (our night time temps are in the 50s now) I have persimmons sprouting in every pot in my container garden. I was just too impatient. I imagine overall germination rate was still poor, but I've got nearly a dozen small seedlings now. And I've found a lot more dried-out seedlings that tried to germinate soil that was too deep for them, and never made it to the surface.

For next year, I plan to simply fall-sow seed into well-marked pots and leave them well into the spring, being not so impatient this time.

I also found a scat pile (probably coyote) this spring that was full of the seeds. The spring rains had eroded most of the scat, so I picked up the clean seeds and sowed them into a dedicated and well-marked bin. It's been about three weeks so far with no sprouts, but I'm going to give them plenty of time.

Dan Boone wrote:... so I picked up the clean seeds

Well, in that case I'd say relatively clean. Though I bet you'll have good germination from those.
I've heard that sometimes it takes another year for them to germinate. Especially with something like goumi, which I'm also doing.

Did anyone mention air layering or air propagation? Just learning it myself this year. Currently propagating --- peachcot, pear, apple, apple, plum. I don't know the names of any of the varieties. From my understanding, the rooted cutting will be the same age as the parent plant, so there's a benefit of having fruit sooner.

Joshua Parke wrote:Did anyone mention air layering or air propagation?

You just did!
Yeah, it's about the only way to propagate some plants like gooseberry. Also usually results in better rooting than tip layering or cuttings.
Care to describe the process?

Edit: BTW, how in the world did you get 2 apples with only 4 posts?

Friends are a great way to get free plants.
I dug up 24 raspberry plants from my friend's garden. I removed that suckers that were escaping from the fenced in area. Now I have 4 varieties of raspberries for free.
Grapes and gooseberries cuttings are coming from 2 more friends.

Cam Mitchell wrote:
Care to describe the process?

Youtube and google would be much better to explain the process. I was using black construction garbage bags, cut into triangles. Then wrap it onto the limb, tie the bottom, tape the seam "I only did this on the last few, and it seems to help", debark and scrape the cambium away, fill plastic pocket with damp peat moss, close and tie the top.....wait 6-8 weeks. It's the first year I've done this, so I don't have any tips or tricks that seem to work for me. But here's a link to some videos on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=air+layering

I hope it's okay that I'm posting stuff about air layering.?.? I know that the thread started off as starting plants from seed, but it seems that it's kind of turning into a topic of ways to gather plants very cheaply to populate our gardens with. Here's a gooseberry, "I think it's a gooseberry", air layer that I took some pictures of while I was there.

-- Clear the area above and below your section you're going to work on so that you don't have small branches in your way.
-- Attach your triangle piece of plastic, overlap it as can be seen in the first picture, and then make a few wraps of string around it and tie it off.
-- I found that it's MUCH easier if you tape up the seam. Try to create an area where a pocket will be created that is nice and round.
-- Remove a ring of bark. It only needs to be about an inch from what I've read. And then scrape away the cambium, this is said to be an important step, the cambium will be kind of shiny and many times a greenish color, "yesterday I did a few on an ornamental flowering apple tree and the cambium was a vibrant pink/red color."
-- Fill up your bag with enough dampened peatmoss to cover the area of bark you removed, and I keep filling until I know that it will be covered with an inch or more of peat moss. I tamp the moss a little bit and kind of move it around and squeeze the bag close then open it back up to fill in with more moss if needed. Just kind of work it around until there will be a nice amount of peat around the prepared area.
-- Close off the bag. Make sure the bag/pocket is pulled taught so that you won't have a saggy bottom after tying up the top. Wrap the excess plastic at the top around the limb, and tie it off with a few wraps of string.

Pretty simple. The first few you do will likely be kinda shoddy. I have to go back and fix a few of the first ones I did. My technique got better very fast. A large help was the tape to close the seam.

Here's the pictures....

more pictures

I have found that the cost of purchase is generally the smallest part of the cost.
It cost just as much to raise a crappy plant, hog, chicken, etc. as it does a good one.
Find the best plants for your area!

So I start with building a collection of good plants.
Then I would look to growing root stock for each woody plant.
Once you have good rootstock and plant material then it is grafting time.

In this manner you can create your own nursery.

There is a point in growing from seed to get genetic diversity.
But I would limit this to rootstock and plants that tend to breed true like wild plums.

Just my two cents based on friends bringing me good deals that cost me a lot of time and money!
I have found that free can cost me much money.

alex Keenan wrote:I have found that the cost of purchase is generally the smallest part of the cost.
It cost just as much to raise a crappy plant, hog, chicken, etc. as it does a good one.
Find the best plants for your area!

So I start with building a collection of good plants.
Then I would look to growing root stock for each woody plant.
Once you have good rootstock and plant material then it is grafting time.

In this manner you can create your own nursery.

There is a point in growing from seed to get genetic diversity.
But I would limit this to rootstock and plants that tend to breed true like wild plums.

Just my two cents based on friends bringing me good deals that cost me a lot of time and money!
I have found that free can cost me much money.

well all it usually costs me to raise any plant, good or bad, is sweat, willingness to have dirt under fingernails perpetually, a bit of pain the back, time spent scavenging mulch and materials for soil building.

but what i really want to say is that just because you buy a plant for money doesnt make it good or better, and just because you get something free or grow from seed it doesnt make it bad or worse. i have seen people (other people cause i dont generally buy plants or trees) buy primo plants/trees from good nurseries, and have them die or be really sad looking through no obvious fault of their own, and seen free seedlings turn into amazing hardy trees....and of course vice versa, but not consistantly one or the other.

generally i find value in places where people do not see it because they have some ideas and assumptions i do not share.

Like I said you have to build a collection of good plant material.
How you obtain it is not as important as getting a genetic collection of plants that will grow well in your environment and local growing conditions.

Sort of like when we started buckeye chickens in the 1990's
We had lots of different lines.
Most were dead ends, it was cheaper to get rid of bad birds than destroy my breeding program and have to start over.
We now have been breeding from a closed flock for over a decade our birds can survive our unique environment.
But we had to cull heavily for years. A sick bird was a dead bird. A bird with crossed beak, bad toes, etc. was raise for freezer.
Survival of the fitest.

That is how I treated hosta when I was breeding them. Find plants that can survive and only raise the healthest seedlings.

For instance if I was breeding black locust I would pay to get shipmast locust if you can find any. I would want these tall straight fast growing trees as part of my breeding program.

It comes down to what traits you want or need and finding genetics for those traits!

You can make a silk purse out of a sows ear (one was really made) but the cost was incredible.
Ask yourself does it make sense to try to breed a yorkie form a greatdane?
Many times it pays to get close to what you want or to collect genetics that are close to what you want.

Spending money may not be the answer but free may also not be the answer.

well ok, i can agree more with those ideas.
survival of the fittest, for sure, best adapted to local conditions for sure. this is more important than whether something is named or unnamed, purchased or free, from a nursery or grown from random fruit.

i would say one of the best places to get fruit seeds is from local trees and farmer's market, just because of those reasons. it has already survived and thrived in your local conditions. and i am lucky in that theres a lot of feral fruit trees out here, as well as where i live theres a lot of fruit trees that are mature, a few with names, a lot without, but all producing edible and quality fruit.

but i still start any citrus seeds or stone fruit that i buy at the grocery market, too, and sometimes even golden apples from market, as well as any interesting fruit they might have. if they make it great, if they dont, not much its lost but a few moments to plant it in a pot.

just today i found golden kiwis at the market, which they never have and i couldnt resist. i bought them more for the seed actually than the fruit, but i will be planning on enjoying both. fingers crossed, would be cool if they sprout. i have gotten the regular deliciosa fuzzy kiwis from the grocery store to start from seed. i'm also delighted when i find an orange with actual seeds in them, tho usually they are seedless even once in a while you get a few.

alex Keenan wrote:

It comes down to what traits you want or need and finding genetics for those traits!

You can make a silk purse out of a sows ear (one was really made) but the cost was incredible.
Ask yourself does it make sense to try to breed a yorkie form a greatdane?
Many times it pays to get close to what you want or to collect genetics that are close to what you want.

no i would never breed a dog, nor do i have any tightly defined specifics of exactly what i want. i have known some excellent mutts =) like my close sister's dog, when people ask what she is we say "she's irish" (redhead) =)

so my aim is a lot more open ended, i want good fruit trees and other edible trees and perennials that i like to eat, that can survive in my conditions without too much pampering. and i dont care if they have a name or not, or have any kind of "pure genetics" or anything like that.

i found this the other day, perhaps someone else will enjoy reading it... i very much agreed with a lot of these ideas, which was nicely refreshing, compared to feeling like most people think its weird to start these sorts of things from seed...and reading over and over again the people who assume all fruit will suck when grown from seed that gets parroted so much..

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/landrace-gardening-nut-trees-zbcz1311.aspx#axzz3C4ic4a1Q

http://garden.lofthouse.com/adaptivar-landrace.phtml

I did three air layers on that fruit bush. Of the three, one scabbed/knotted up just above the top cut with no roots, one of them had some roots, and one of them was filled with roots....I took a picture of that one. The leaves went brown after cutting and planting it. I suppose I'll only know next year if it made it. Actually all of the air layers I did that actually grew roots, when planted they wilted, so I'll have to wait until next year to know if it was a full success. I have been planting them within the past couple of weeks. Most of them didn't grow any roots....they can dry out, and I imagine that contributed to a lot of the failures.

thats pretty common with things like that, for all the leaves to fall off. the plant is focussing on developing roots so it pulls the nutrients from the leaf. even just to transplant a tree sometimes that happens, then the next spring or later it will get its groove on and develop new leaves.

cool anyway, good job on your air layering.

Roger Taylor wrote:

Renate Haeckler wrote:Grow them from SEED!!! You don't even need to buy seeds, just use seeds from the ones you get to eat! I've been looking around online and I've seen instructions to grow grapes from seeds, blueberries, strawberries, plums, peaches, apricots, cherries, & lots more.

I've tried planting two different apricot kernels directly in potting mix, and sitting them outside, and both struck. And I've two hass avocados on the window sill sprouting at the moment. And a few kiwifruit seedlings looking promising.

Has anyone themselves actually planted out a sprouted avocado seed? I've read that you should let the trunk grow up six inches then snip it off, then plant it out. I'm tempted to just plant it out now, as the roots are somewhat constrained in their current coffee mug.

I've previously planted avocado trees from seed. I had the best success when the seed had some top growth going, I never snipped the new growth and the trees have been in an avocado orchard since 1970 and are now 60 ft. tall and very productive according to the orchard owner. I just wish I was still living In California so I could collect some of the fruits.

Avocados fruit here in areas that whose typical summer days are in the 70s without too many days in the 80s and with a cloudy, rainy period from Nov-March. You don't need as much heat and sun to get an avocado as you think. If we can get Avocados in a mild maritime zone 9 at 40 degrees lattitude, I think coastal California can do it. Some are grafted Haas or Bacon, some are just from people planting pits from the supermarket.

Victor Johanson wrote:The "don't waste your time" perspective on growing fruit trees from seeds is based on the fact that only a tiny percentage of seedlings meet the numerous criteria important to industry (shipping, keeping, machine harvesting, narrow flavor profile, etc). This has translated itself into the conventional wisdom that it's a waste of time. However, my criteria are quite different from those of industry, and one of the most important is biodiversity. I don't want a bunch of identical clones; I want individuals. I don't care if all my apples are big, crisp, juicy, and sweet; I have a myriad of uses for other kinds of fruit (and frankly, I'm sick of the uniformity that has been imposed on us--what about apples with melting flesh that will never ship properly but taste awesome?). Besides, I live in Fairbanks, and no one breeds for us. I've embarked on a campaign to plant gobs of seeds and do my own selections. I don't care if what I get is competitive with commercial sources. I do care if they survive the winter and bear usable fruit. I know a guy up here who planted apple seed from a local orchard and so far the only one that has fruited is eminently usable. The reason we had so many fruit varieties in the past was the common practice of planting trees from seeds. There was a project done in Geneva in 1898-99 where intentional crosses were made between 10 parents. Of the resulting 148 seedlings, 106 had fruited by 1911. Of these, 13 were considered acceptable enough to name and release (Cortland was one of these), and 14 suitable for additional testing. Even though they were intentional crosses, those odds ain't that bad, and many of the fruits we enjoy today originated from open pollinated seedlings (like Red and Golden Delicious apples).

Check it out:

http://turkeysong.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/apple-breeding-part-1-everyone-knows-you-cant-do-it-right/

Damn it man, YOU have it figured out, keep it up!

Rick Howd wrote:

Damn it man, YOU have it figured out, keep it up!

Well, I'm trying to figure it out, but there's so much BS to wade through it gets confusing...but thanks and I intend to keep it up.

Don't forget to check out other threads on this topic.

https://permies.com/t/14353/plants/Reforestation-Growing-Trees-Arid-barren

I just stumbled upon this one, but the one I linked to above is much more current and is very inspiring.

Konstantinos "Kostas" seems to be able to put seeds from many fruit trees into the ground in fall and have saplings the following spring.

I'm going to be doing this for life on my property. If I get a tree that bears bad fruit to my taste it can be used for livestock fodder, compost, oils, black soldier flies (to feed chickens) and likely many other uses. If there are ones that taste great I can graft them onto lesser tasting ones... Good all around.