Did you know that most of today's mass marketed apple varieties were were originally discovered growing wild from seed? Old varieties such as Newton Pippen, Arkansas Black, and the famous Cox Orange Pippin. More significantly, today's supermarket staples like Golden Delicious, Ginger Gold, Jonathan and Granny Smith (among many others) were all originally discovered as volunteer plants found sprouting at the edge of the orchard or in a compost pile. However, we are always cautioned by the “horticultural industry” (growers and university research programs) not to plant the seeds out of our store-bought apples because they will not grow “true from seed”--like that's a bad thing. We are told that the resulting plant will most likely give small sour ugly non-disease-resistant sparse (unmarketable) mutant fruits, therefore a waste of time and effort. I think that the horticultural industry discourages folks from planting apple trees from seed, for their own reasons--so that they can sell us, by exclusive license, grafts of their supposedly superior product. Excuse me, isn't the new catch phrase “biodiversity”? Don't get me wrong, the university breeding programs have their place; after all, they gave us Liberty, Gold Rush and Enterprise, didn't they? In fact my favorite eating apple happens to be Gala, which is also the result of a controlled breeding project.
Before I did the above little bit of research, Junior Gardener and I had planted the pips from a Granny Smith and a Gala apple into pots set on the kitchen window, she with high hopes but myself with low expectations. I schooled her with what I had been lead to believe- they probably won't sprout, but if one of them does, don't expect it to have edible apples on it. Well every last one sprouted and are growing very well on the cold January window sill. So now who knows. Maybe one of them will eventually bear fruit good enough to find its place along side it's parents at the supermarket. Then we will be getting the last laugh collecting the license fees when our little tree is propagated for commercial use. Or maybe we'll just get 7 sturdy unnamed sour crabapple trees to feed the birds in winters to come. Whatever. It's all good. Won't it be cool to be able to say to friends and admirers that my little espalier row of apples along side the driveway was planted from super market apple seeds. Of course apples won't usually come into bearing until 7-10 years from seed. Apparently there are ways around that as well. I am so inspired now that I plan to have a row of supermarket pear seedlings on the other side of the yard, as soon as I get some more pots for the seeds.
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3 comments:
The bad news is the chance of any one of your pips growing into an interesting apple tree is about 1 in 100.
The good news is you have already increased your chances to 7 in 100.
The even better news is all you have to do is find about 15 other people trying the same thing, and you are almost assured of finding at least 1 interesting tree among you that you can all share. There are lots of other people doing the same thing, many of them on the Internet, and you are all in effect working together on a giant breeding project that can benefit people in generations to come.
This is how many important historical apple trees were discovered, and you are doing a very important thing by continuing the tradition, even if you only grow 7 sour unnamed crabapple trees yourself.
Besides, one of those crab apples might be not too bad. Perfect for pickling. I would help out but my garden is bursting at the seams. As soon as I get a farm... anyhow that's a couple years off. I will follow your progress with fascination. If you do only get poor tasting apples, you can use them as graft stalk too but replacing limbs with other people's apples. Just for fun of course!
I am rooting for you!
P.S. Welcome to Homegrown Goodness.
Anyway, even if you discover in a decade that the fruit is totally useless to you, if you have a good healthy root system, you can chop off the top and graft something cool onto it. I have the luxury of living in the midst of acres of "wild" apples, and have an orchard that is mostly stuff I grafted onto wild stock. You can get very interesting scion through Seed Savers Exchange or NAFEX, or go apple exploring in the fall if you are near any wild apples...
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