apple trees from seed ?

anyone try it? -- Johnny Appleseed did --

I did and all I got were pea sized fruit though the tree is great and blooms every spring.I used granny smith for seed but if you used an older type it might work.

Jim, when an apple seed is planted you have no guarantee as to what the tree will eventually become. This is because apple trees are heterozygous and thus are not true to seed. The only way you can get a particular variety is by grafting a branch from a given variety onto root stock. Any apple tree that is for sale has been grafted. I grew up on a dairy farm where the deer and our cows loved to eat apples so we had a lot wild trees planted by seed when the animals pooped. Most of the apples from the trees were lousy, flavorless and woody. However, once in a great while you'd find decent or good apples. I'm sure Johnny Appleseed's luck with apple seeds was similar to the deer and cows on my mom's farm. I think cows are similar to people in that some weren't that interested in the apples and a few of the cows couldn't get enough. Cows have two stomachs and the apples would ferment in one of the stomachs which would cause the cows to get drunk. It was laughable to watch a cow stumble around with her udder swinging back and forth. However, I never saw a cow passed out drunk, either they could not eat enough apples to do this or they knew when to stop.

The same goes for pears.

I watched a special on Johnny Appleseed the other day.
He would go to areas that new towns were to be built and plant orchards from seeds. He would then sell the seedlings to the people once they moved in a few years later. He was a deeply religious man and they did not believe in grafting for some reason and that is why he always planted seeds. Well, almost all of the apple trees turned out to be of poor quality and all they were good for was apple cider. So, by planting just seeds he contributed to a large alcolholic outbreak in America. It became so bad that they demonized the apple in America and there was a movement to destroy all apple trees unless they were good eating variety. Thus, that is how we got the sweet apple varieties in America.

Cool fact!

Here is an even more interesting article on apples. It discusses how poor the gene pool is on current day apples and that is why they are so prone to disease. They are going back to the forest in Kazakhstan where all apples in the world originated . The forests were being destroyed and scientists were frantically trying to get trees from there so they could save our apples before they were inbred to death.
Currently apples are one of the most toxic fruit due to all the pesticides we have to put on them to keep the insects and disease from killing them. However, if we selectively bred wild apples into our current varieties, we could eliminate the need for most of the pesticides. We currently dont do this because we are idiots. HA!
I hope it catches on.

http://www.mongabay.com/external/wild_apples.htm

This message was edited Dec 7, 2009 10:04 PM

When I was little my great aunt had an apple tree growing in her yard that was planted more than a hundred years ago and nice sweet-tart apples every year.She told me she never sprayed it or watered it.After her death and before I could find some to graft one for me her great grandson burned down her house dug up all old trees and shrubs including the apple to make room for his ugly new house.what a loss.Jujubetexas wait to look what's sprayed on peaches!Do have any facts on pears?Rob.

My grand parents had a good size farm and there were fruit trees planted in between the fields. The apple trees are probably 100 years old and they were decent sized mostly yellow tart apples, personally I like tart apples. Seems you could just collect cuttings from old farms if there is some sort of inbreding problem?? These apples got no attention they simply were collected for the animals I think. They have no bug problems at all and I would think no disease problems or they would have died off long ago. I'd go get some cuttings but I'm to warm for apples where I am.

How long does an apple tree live for??? Just asking because the grand parents farm was started in 1700's and I have no idea how long those trees have been there. Also pears, cherries etc.

Hey CowPea,
The most interesting story I have about pears is from my neighbor. She is about 90 and has a pear tree about the same age. They are as hard as a rock and a danger to eat because of it. However, she says that they are a miracle for those afflicted with constipation. She will then go on the name each person that has had constipation and when she gave them her magic poop pears to cure themselves of the horrid condition.
I have purposely not asked for any since then in fear of being added to the list.

Hey Core HHI,
You can grow apples in your area.
Anna and Dorsett apples only require a few hundred hours of chilling. Anna was developed in Israel and Dorsett was developed in the Bahamas. They are good pollinators for each other as well. I am trying a few here in Texas as my neighbor has had good luck with them. I would like to get a good heat tolerant crab apple or Kazakhstan apple to pollinate with them so I could plant those seeds. I currently have 11 acres that I have started planting trees and seeds. I am doing Jujube, Cherry, Satsuma, Juneberry, Kumquat, Tamarind, Persimmon, Chinese Soapberry and Spring Tree seeds to get different varieties. I have a row on the side of the property about 30 x 1200 feet. Whenever I eat a fruit, I save the seeds just for this row.

Great idea jujubetexas. I wish it didn't that cold here.Try Owari or Ponkan satsumas they're great .I'm trying to get my orchard going.The deer have made it hard to do.Do you graft?I can get scion wood of some hundred year old pears that are cool.Don't try to grow pears from seed.I tryed and all I got were thorn pears.They make great rootstocks for grafting though.Thorn pears can become invasive to.They have tiny fruit and seed everywhere if they are happy.

thanks for the replys --- so we need trees from Russia or China for
diversity ? wow don't know what apple ! just kidding -- didn't know
the apple was demonized because of John Chapman (Appleseed)
question -- shouldn't we still plant a few from seed for diversity and
having a more disease-free tree ?

You can try growing crabapples with regular apples and then take the seeds from the crabapple and try to grow a new variety. Probably 1 in 50 will be decent. Wait 4 years and test the fruit.
Crabapples are basically wild apples but they still might be closely related to the American apples. They are definitely much more disease resistant. The only way to ensure you have a wild apple which is very different from American apples is to get wild apples from Asia. How one goes about doing this is a mystery to me so I am just going to try crabapples.

Hey Cowpea,
I have been grafting for the last two years. I will be trying citrus grafting this spring. I have yet to plant a pear seed but I have about 16 asian pear trees. I might try it next year. Like you said, if you get a dud, you can always use it as rootstock.
I dont have a deer problem because the packs of wild boars run them off. HA!
Those wild pigs will destroy anything and everything but since you can hunt them year round, I have a guy that comes out and thins them out some. I also walk my dogs on the fence line and their pee seems to scare them off a bit. So I hear. They shot a 350 pound 7 foot boar a while back. It had 4 inch tusks.

Jujubetexas, I think I would be afraid to take a walk where you live. Are they as aggressive as they are portrayed on tv? Have you ever tasted wild boar?

My friend just texted me that he killed two more this morning.
From my experiences, they seem very afraid of humans. I would not like to test that any further than I already have. The main problem with them is their destructive nature. I would liken them to minature bulldozers. They will take out small trees, crops, fences and chase off competing wildlife.

Hey jujubetexas thats great to hear! Wild pigs are truly awful and destroy you garden and orchard.We hunt them with dogs and have to put body armour onthe dogs to protect them.Often we would loose dogs to them.I don't own any dogs to hunt with so I tagged along as shooter.Sows are the best eating to me.Boar meat is to strong-yuck!

This message was edited Dec 10, 2009 12:00 PM

I usually only take the ribs if i am there when they shoot one.
I did see a thing on the new in San Antonio where the wild pigs are going into the apartment complexes on the outskirts of the city to eat garbage. They had chased a few children there.

I don't think we've had any really in an urbanized area, but they're definitely in some of the preserves within the city limits, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time. I'm pretty chary of them when I'm out there. They're very big, and can be very determined. Although I have to admit your idea of using wild boar to control deer populations has a perverse godzilla vs bambi appeal...

It wasnt my idea. It is just how it was when I bought the land. The hogs were already there tearing things up. I built the fence around my trees to keep deer out and it was only afterwards that I found out that the tracks were from hogs. They have probably been there for decades.

The creepy thing is when you go out there and they have picked a bucket or a shovel and moved it around. Just carried it off somewhere for no reason.

Maybe there sending you a message!LOL!

My life is turning into that book Animal Farm. Pretty soon the hogs will be picked up "joy driving" my pickup and using my ATM card.

Better lock your doors and hide your keys!

We have a feeder out there but we also setup something we call a "bump bucket". It is just a Home Depot bucket with four quarter sized holes in the bottom sides. We hang it from a tree and they have to bump it around for the corn to drop out. When they eat all the corn from the deer feeder, they go over to the bucket and play with it. The bottom hangs about 18 inches off the ground and one night the pulled the lid off. The lid being over 3 feet off the ground.

Let me explain the significance of that last statement. It has a heavy duty super snap lid that I can barely take off. Not only that, you have to lift the bucket up first because the handle blocks the lid from coming off as since it is hanging from a tree.

Remember that scene from 2001 A Space Oddessey when the apes realized how to use a bone as a tool. We are on the eve of a pig revolution.

This is a bloomin FACINATING discussion!! And we thought the deer were difficult in New England, huh HelenVT? So jujbetexas....why do you have a deer feeder? And I had no idea that good ol Johnny had such bad luck getting actual apples, although now it makes sense.

We have such a problem with hogs some areas it is unreal.On my uncle's hunting lease we have tripod deer feeders with 150 pound capacity drums six feet in the air with timers on them.The hogs don't like to wait for the timers to go off so they rooted around each leg until they caused it to fall spilling the corn.Those feeders arent cheap.We then put up woven wire 36'' fence around the feeder area.The deer can jump the fence with no problem.We thought it would stop the hogs.We were wrong.It just made them mad!They dug under the fence and destroyed the feeders again!

This message was edited Dec 10, 2009 7:02 PM

Oh, the seriously creepy hog book is "Oryx and Crake".

Yes. We had to move away from the tripod feeder for the hogs. I put in four t-posts and then ran two on top to connect them together in a X formation. We now use a hanging feeder because they would destroy the tripod feeder. They would knock it down and drag it around until the top came off. It had to weigh over 100 pounds with corn in it.

OK, I'm naive, deer feeders are to fatten the deer up for hunting. We wouldn't even imagine that in southern New England. Interesting!

When I lived in NY we use to go deer hunting in the corn Fields so they were already fattened up. Farmers really didn't like deer or pheasant. From what I hear up state NY has turned into some out of control animal farm, LOL. It appears not many people hunt around there any more and deer, turkey, Canadian geese, coyote and even the bears have had a population explosion.

The feeders dont really send out enough food to fatten them up. We use it to get the pigs on a schedule so we know when and where they will be. You can take it a step further by putting a motion activated hunting camera out there. It will take pictures of the pigs with the time so you know when they like to come around. You just show up about 1 hour before that time.

One could try trapping them and then what you do is up to you.

http://www.boarmasters.com/Trapping.html

Great read on the apples / insecticides, jujube. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks. I just bought some of the low chill apples for Texas that I plan on crossing with crab apples.

Anna: from Israel
Ein Shemer: from Israel
Dorsett: from Bahamas

All of these only require 100-300 winter chill.

Hey Alaska Rick,
I do have a trapping cage similar to the ones in those photos. They ripped a hole right through it. I couldnt believe it. I had to replace some panels and reinforce them with rebar. That seemed to do the trick. Scary stuff.

In Vermont it is illegal to feed wild animals that are hunted. CoreHHI is correct, wild animals in more urban areas of Vermont are growing in population. Another problem is that less people hunt than in the past. Also, hunting is not considered politically correct. In my town a year ago a girl in middle school was lucky enough to bag a deer. At a show and tell in class she announced the event to her fellow classmates. She was ostracised by her teacher and then fellow students. Her Dad went to see the teacher the next day and straightened the teacher out. I don't know the girl, so I wonder how her classmates treated her for the rest of the school year. Unfortunately, my town which used to be made up of farms and local folks is now considered the hot town for out of staters to move into. Everything has changed.

Here in Florida, feral hogs are considered farm animals owned by the owner of whatever property they're on. They vary from looking like small, skinny farm hogs to looking like fairly big black wild boars. An immature sow, practically tame, got under my trailer a few years ago, ripped through the ductwork, and got herself air-conditioned quarters for a month until I realized what had happened. I ended up shooting her in the head with buckshot from quite close, then had to go around to the neighbors offering the remains free to someone willing to butcher them -- it wasn't hard to find someone. That hog was just too clever to live, sadly.

Johnny Appleseed got most of his seeds from operators of cider presses, I believe, and that would explain why trees grown from them tended to be okay for cider if for nothing else.

These are not feral hogs. These are wild Russian hogs. It is a completely different breed and not a domestic that went wild or interbred with Javelina. There are feral hogs in this area and they are destructive as well but they dont breed as quickly and are not as well adapted to the wild.

The problem with apples is that even a seed from a good variety will probably produce a tart cider apple tree. If Johnny did get his seeds from cider apples, all the worse.

I didn't read this thread word for word, but I believe if you check around you will find that cows have 4 stomachs & not 2. Better send about cows getting drunk on apples to Myth Busters. It would make an interesting topic!
Also getting drunk on apple cider, there is no alcohol in cider. My friend has a large apple orchard & just this summer started a Hard Cider Business. The apple juice has to be done the same as any other fruit to make wine. Lots of sugar, etc.
Don't know much about wild, (feral) hogs. Up north here we keep hogs in pens & barns.

Anyhow I got a chuckle out of reading this.
Bernie

I dont know about apples but you can make alcohol from many fruits without sugar, etc. I am betting that they are adding more sugar to the apple cider to make the drink more alcoholic. Apples already have a high sugar content off the tree.
I am getting a Marula seeds soon and that is a fruit that they make an alcoholic beverage in 24 hours with nothing but water. In fact, they are many documentaries about the monkies getting wasted from just the fruit on the ground. The reports of elephants getting drunk are not true because of their size.