Best way to plant antonovka Apple seeds

I have about 100 antonovka apples seeds that i want to plant randomly in areas of my farm. What's the process for this? I know k need to stratify them, is there a best practice? Do I just gouge a hole, put in a seed and step on it to cover? Or put in a guerilla gardening style ball?

If it's not too bad, I'm thinking of planting 500 and seeing what happens. I have an area (zone 5) that I could plant them all with decent spacing.

Any advice is appreciated.
Matt

I'm thinking of planting 500 and seeing what happens.

What will happen, is that every Russian in the county will be climbing your fence. LOL

From my source, they need 60-90 days moist stratification.

I wouldn't bother with seed balls. Plop 'em in the ground and step on them. That should do it.

And for stratify, just put them in moist peat moss in the refrigerator for that time period?

Also, will they pollinate themselves? I don't have other seeds to plant that are true to themselves like these

Hey M Johnson,

This is the first year I try these antonovka apple seeds - I hope they do well.

Regular apple seeds, as John Polk says, "just drop them in a small hole them with a bit of soil", in the winter time -
so they have 2 to 3 months of cold and wet weather.

I use apple trees for reforestation purposes - ground cover tree - so far it seems they will work out well - plus provide
food for people and animals - we will see.

If you plan on doing thousands in the future seed clay balls/cubes would be worth the time.

Good Luck - let us know how it goes

Kostas

Also, will they pollinate themselves?

Antonovka are not self fertile. They are, however one of the very few that will grow true from seed.
For a large listing of self fertile apples, see https://permies.com/forums/posts/list/7503#67370

Thanks for the heads up John - I had no idea the Antonovka are not self fertile - I will need to locate a place where I can buy self fertile seeds
you mention - if you know of any places, please let me know

Kostas

M Johnson,

Thanks for sending us that big gob of antonovka seeds! I gave you some pie and some "apples."

You're welcome! Just a little thanks for all the info I get from you.

If we can figure out a good pollinator for antonovka, I will track down a bunch of those seeds and send them too. That way when someone plants them at the lab, they just need to switch back and forth.

I wonder if there is another true to seed Apple that would pollinate the antonovka...or even one that wasn't true to seed but would still pollinate? Anyone have ideas?

I think that since seedlings aren't exact clones of the same plant they might pollinate each other. I'd probably graft some disease resistant desert varieties onto some of them for insurance and variety. You could plant some crab apples too.

Where did you get the seeds? I've been wanting to try some from seed. I've bought rootstock from Raintree to graft on. I'd like to try some from seeds and not graft on them.

How are they for eating?

"Not self fertile" just means that if you have one tree (or all of one grafted clone) you won't get apples. When you grow trees from seed, each is a different variety and will be able to pollinate each other.

Antonovka Pollinators
This nursery has a huge selection of self-fertile apples.
They also have (probably) the best pollination listings for many apple varieties.
(It is a British company with a nurseries on both sides of the Atlantic.)

I highly recommend them if you are looking for anything not found at most nurseries.

Myseeds.co is the site. Great prices. I want to find another tree that will pollinate and is true to itself so I can plant them by seed with the antonovka ones (20' away). Don't know if that is possible since there are so few apples that grow true from seed. But if I found crab apples or something j could grow from seed that might not be true but would still pollinate I would do that.

For 500 trees doing seedlings won't work financially.

Thanks for the info on seed co's

here is an article of interest

https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-fatherland-of-apples/

Kostas

I read someplace (not sure where) that the fameuse or snow apple produces something like 70% true to seed offspring, so they might not be too bad to plant along side your antinovka's.

Just a word of advice as far as using the plastic bag method to stratify the seeds-I recommend using mostly sand or clay (something light in color). It may sound silly but black seeds in dark colored dirt/peat moss are hard to find. I also discovered most of my seeds turned to mush so perhaps be careful with adding too much moisture. I started with 10 seeds and ended up with only 2 in pots. But such is my luck.

I bought an ounce of Antonovka apple seeds from F. W. Schumacher Co. I put a few hundred into cold moist stratification already. I have hundreds left if anybody wants any. No wonder I have hundreds left. Look how many are in a pound.

https://www.treeshrubseeds.com/specieslist?id=42&ID2=&g=

Must be about 800 in the ounce I bought. So I might have 500 left or so.

Marilyn

Marilyn I would appreciate some. I can PM you to arrange something. I'm only looking for 10 since my last attempt failed.

If you can get a hole in the ground now, they will stratify themselves and emerge at the right time.

Marilyn Paris wrote:I bought an ounce of Antonovka apple seeds from F. W. Schumacher Co. I put a few hundred into cold moist stratification already. I have hundreds left if anybody wants any. No wonder I have hundreds left. Look how many are in a pound.

https://www.treeshrubseeds.com/specieslist?id=42&ID2=&g=

Must be about 800 in the ounce I bought. So I might have 500 left or so.

Marilyn

I stratified seed from them last winter and had a high percentage germinate. I think you'll be surprised how vigorous they will grow, mine shot up fast and even a few "extras" I plugged into odd spots grew really well. I swear they even were putting on fresh growth late into freezing temps in November here. They were a good size to graft to by the time snow covered them if that's your intention.