Growing An Apple Tree From Seed

i always remember when i was young my grandfather had planted an apple core in his garden. It took about seven years to reach about 4ft then it strangely died for no apparent reason,then my grandfather died about a year later so i never found out the variety

As a child I used to sow apple seeds from shop brought apples. We would sow them in small pots and keep them damp and in the airing cupboard till they germinated. Most of them rotted away but we did have about 3 or 4 germinate and make small trees in just a few years. We planted them at the bottom of the garden and after about 4 years we did manage to get a small harvest from them. The harvest was very small and didnt come every year though. I dont know what type of apples they were but they were very sweet and almost completely green.

I think anything that show such a strong will to live should be given a chance. However I have done this before and they always seem to get to be a couple of years old and then give up

I've got about 4 on the go- which must be about 5 years old now- and still in their original6" pots!!!They're about 2 ft high and were grown from one of 2 apples growing in my SIL's garden ( she's moved since) Naturally the garden fairies came and nicked the labels so I've no idea which type survived, but some seeds were from humongous apples-some of them 8" x 6 " and fluffy white insides- never needing sugar when baked. The others were a little smaller and more tart.
She had no idea to the varieties of either so goodness knows how tall they'll grow, but we have a field now- so I'll eventually plant them at the far end.
After 4 years of pure neglect 4 of the original 12 have survived and clearly bonsaied!!!
Good luck with yours- mine too deserve to survive - it's quite exciting really isn't it???

Even if it survives it will probably have characteristics of both Mummy and Daddy apple. If the pollinating apple (Daddy) was a crab apple you could be caught out in a few years by having grown a lemon.

The roots are a wild card and you may have a 100 foot lemon, but it probably won't survive.

sorry to be a Job's comforter but look at it this way, if it turns out to be a new, tasty, variety you could be famous all over Ecklefecken, or somewhere.

By all means attempt to grow a tree from seed, but if you want to try, you would be better using a pip from a home-grown apple, rather than a commercial apple.
The reason being that the commercial apple will almost certainly have a crab apple as it's father (crab apples are commonly used as pollinators because they're very fertile).
Therefore, the chances are that the apples will be half-way between a normal apple and a supermarket apple. Most likely only suitable for cooking or jams. But because of its eating-apple parentage, it may have too little flavour to make a good cooker.
Commercial varieties generally have poor disease resistance and you may find that your little seedling needs to be kept on life support - I grow seedlings as rootstocks, but most of them die before the age of three (they are not sprayed).
If you grow an apple from a home-grown pip, it is likely that a nearby "proper" apple tree has pollinated the pip. The chances then become much higher that you'll have a decent apple.
But the chances of a pip turning into a truly ground-breaking variety are not very high.
Even the "profesional" breeders carefuly choose the parents to try to get the result they want, then end up only selecting one or two seedlings for further evaluation, out of many thousands.

Even if you grow a new variety, you may find that it suffers from biennial bearing, or prone to a certain disease, or needs warmer climate to ripen the fruit, or the fruit is tempting to maggots, or the flowers open so early that they get frosted, or the tree is too vigorous, or the tree refuses to fruit until it is 15 years old........the list of obstacles is immense.

There is no such thing as a universal pollinator, since apple flowers recognise related pollen (recognise own pollen, mothers/fathers/brothers/sisters etc) and they destroy related pollen before it fertilises the flowers.
It reduces the chance of in-breeding.

By al means try it for a bit of fun, but if it was that easy to grow a new variety, we'd all be doing it.

I would keep your seedling frost-free until you can transfer it outside after the risk of frosts has passed in May.
Make sure that it gets plenty of water (don't let it dry out or it will be attacked by mildew) and make sure it has adequate nutrients.
Planting in the garden may stunt its growth, so you might need to keep it in a pot for the first couple of years.
Let the pot stand outside all year, so that it gets the proper winter chill that apples need for healthy development.
I would expect it to reach 1-2ft in it's first year. In the second year, it'll probably grow the same amount. I doubt that it'll want to grow branches until at least year three.

If I were wanting to produce an apple from a pip, so that my chances of producing a "half-decent" tree were good.....

I would choose parents with the following features (although not al features are present in one variety):

Grow well in my area.
Slightly large or large fruit.
October ripening.
Colourful fruit.
Sweet fruit.
Good disease resistance.
Low-medium vigour.
Mid-late flowering or frost-resistant blossom.
Reliable cropping.

All the above shifts your "normal distribution curve" of the offspring deeper into the favourable characteristics.

In other words, choose parents with sweet fruit and the offspring will have a strong influence to have sweet fruit.
Choose parents with colourful fruit and the offspring have a good chance of inheriting coloured fruit - the colours can add to the flavour (such as a hint of strawberry-flavour in Worcerter Pearmain and it's offspring).

In fact, Worcester Pearmain would make an excellent parent for a new eating apple. It has many of the above pre-requisites for producing good offspring.
Egremont Russet could also make a good parent on account of many good features, although commercial interest in russets is low because they're not as colourful or attractive looking.
Spartan is another potentially good parent that comes to mind.

I certainly wouldn't choose hard, sharp, green apples because if it was successful, the commercial orchards like to pick slightly unripe fruit, which would make a sharp-tasting variety even worse.
Consumers would prefer a slightly unripe sweet apple because it will still have enough sweetness to not make them shudder.

Hope thats of interest.

Wow ! Thanks very much indeed, a "potted education" on the ins and outs of growing apple trees from seeds. And it turns out what I thought I knew, or guessed, was so wrong !
I had always believed the myth that seeds from the fruit of grafted apple trees were sterile in 99.99% of cases, but to judge from the number of people planting them, that must be wrong. And I had guessed that any seed vigourous to not be sterile would have a good chance of survival...t'ain't so, clearly !
If truth be told, I had no expectations of starting a new Granny/Grandad Smith dynasty. Frankly, all I'm actually hoping for is something that will live, help improve my skill (and record) at growing fruit trees, and with a bit of luck, sit in a corner somewhere and pollinate whatever other fruit trees are nearby, thus giving better crops. That's why I was thinking universal pollinator - I was thinking it would probably be like a crab apple, which I was under the impression can pollinate any apple tree. But that sounds like it is a duff idea too.
I can't thank you enough, guys, for your wonderful information. I love to have my preconceptions broken to pieces, it helps keep my brain limber and my ideas flexible ! Kind of like the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland" believing 6 impossible things before breakfast I suppose...
Hope the cold goes soon, Sarraceniac. (It's not flu unless your ribs hurt)

There are cunning ways that you can guesstimate how a seeding will be when it matures.
While they are not 100% guarantees, they can be useful to really take care of the most promising seedlings.

Generally speaking, if a seedling leafs-out early in it's second year, it will flower early every season, as an adult tree - which risks frost damage.
If it leafs-out late, it is probably late-flowering, which is generally more desirable.
Generally speaking, if it has large leaves, it will produce large fruit.
Small leaves are closely associated with small fruit.

Sooooo....

Choose sweet, red, disease-resistant parents to obtain your pips.
Then select the most promising seedlings by leaf size and late-leafing-out.
Let diseases kill the sickly seedlings to leave only the strongest.

If you select a parent such as "Saturn" or "Liberty" (both sweet, red apples), you will have a 50% chance of each seedling having the Vf gene, which gives complete immunity to most strains of apple scab.

It's not foolproof, but it will enormously improve your odds of a good seedling.

I have some chilled-but-not-yet-planted pips from last year.
While I can't remember what I've got, I can have a look at my labelled containers in the morning, if you might want some of them.

Sorry for the delay in answering your kind offer, FB, my ISP keeps taking a holiday..I think the staff must be skiers, it coincides with the wintery weather.
I am very interested in your offer, as I'm keen to try to come up with some fruit trees that will do better in our wet climate in the NorthEast of Scotland. Also the speed with which tree breeding happens suits my patient nature and glacial speed of life !
I have lots of different places where I can plant trees as I do conservation work on NTS properties, but the problem here is that I am due to move in a couple of months and at present not only am I surrounded by snow and hard frost, but also I have no secure garden/allotment plot organised where I am going. Unless I can get that sorted out, I don't want to take your seeds and put them somewhere that the seedlings will either be killed by cold or trampled by vandals.
Can you recommend a good apple tree, or lineage, that would do well hereabouts ? A lot of the garden centres here just seem to stock the usual few - Golden Delicious, Raeburn, James Grieve.
I noticed Tesco selling some last week for £7 each, which is about my limit financially I'm afraid, and they had a better selection. I noticed a Worcester apple, can't remember if it was Pearmain or not - worth bothering with, or too likely to not be what it says on the label ? I had a good look at the roots, trunk, overall growth (I used to be a non-fruit tree nurseryman) and some of them were fine enough trees, although some were obviously poorly due to poor packaging and neglect.
Great to have your brains to pick, I'm sure you know how impossible finding out this sort of thing would be otherwise !

Have a look at this thread - and consider things such as:

> Link <

Resistance to diseases and pests.
Late flowering to avoid frost.
What you can use the apple for. I'd suggest that what I label as "dual-purpose" may only be suitable for cooking when grown in Scotland, due to shorter and cooler summers.

I would choose "parent" varieties with features at the favourable end of the spectrum.

Certain varieties seem to make good "givers" of resistance to certain diseases.
Many of the "old fashioned" russets have very good resistance (except to leaf scab, but fruit is scab-resistant). Russets also have rich flavours.
The problem is that commercial growers don't like russets because customers don't like the irregular shape, lack of colour, lack of shinyness and the slightly rough skins.
A few of the modern varietes also have been carefully bred to provide visually pleasing apples with genes that give strong resistance to certain diseases.
Saturn and Liberty are good examples.

Likewise, certain varieties make good "givers" of susceptibility ( )to diseases.
Cox's Orange Pippin is a sickly tree in many areas, and many of it's offspring share the sickly tendency (especially canker), or have no better than average disease resistance.

I would suggest using the modern, attractive-looking varieties with high disease resistance (e.g. Saturn, Liberty) and crossing with some of the old russet types.
The offspring will be very variable in appearance, but have the potential for some very desirable features.

The late-flowering Crawley Beauty crossed with Court Pendu Plat would have some good potential. Both parents have good disease resistance and very late flowering.
The small size of fruit from Court Pendu Plat could be offset by the large fruit from Crawley Beauty.


I would also suggest getting your hands on some MM111 and M26 rootstock to grow them on.
Those two rootstocks are more winter-hardy than MM106 or M25 and they are also less prone to flower early in the season and/or less prone to hold their leaves late in the season - both of which risk frost damage to flower buds.

Use MM111 for everything you can, but don't use it for:
Fast-growing varieties (they will grow too large and it will induce bitter pit).
Not ideal for any variety prone to bitter pit.

If you want to do things "on the cheap", you could use seedlings as rootstocks and then graft them with selected varieties (I can send you some graftwood, or you can buy graftwood for about £1 pr pencil-sized stick from certain nurseries).

Or you could buy a well-branched and large-sized Bramley's Seedling from teh shops for £7 and plant it ASAP.
It'll be a strong, fairly disease-resistant tree that grows fast.
You can then graft-over the main branches to specific varieties that you want to use for breeding purposes.
Basically it'll become a "big family" tree (several varieties grafted), on a rugged Bramley trunk and primary branches.