Author Topic: Apple seedling flowering super young  (Read 1575 times)

D-Grower

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Apple seedling flowering super young
« on: March 10, 2021, 07:15:31 AM »
Wanted to share this with anyone that might find it interesting. I grew a seedling apple from a store bought fruit that I intended to be rootstock eventually. The other day to my surprise I noticed there are 5 or so flower buds forming on the plant. It could have been a seed from a Fuji, gala, or maybe red delicious or granny Smith. Most likely one of the first two since that's mostly the types we buy. Anyways the seedling is probably not even two years old yet. Hear that it should be around 8 years to flower. Perhaps a freak like this one could be useful to breed varieties that possibly might mature quickly??? Pics kinda suck but I'll post a few here soon.
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D-Grower

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2021, 07:20:44 AM »








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Odenwald

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2021, 02:11:08 PM »
Great to see such amazing photos.

D-Grower

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #3 on: March 10, 2021, 03:46:56 PM »
Yep like I stated above before posting them.
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W.

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #4 on: March 10, 2021, 11:36:57 PM »
That is interesting to see one fruit so young. Given the genetic variability of apples, I would imagine that freak mutations like this would occur with regularity. Since relatively few people plant apple pips, there are probably many mutations that are not allowed to happen. I had a pomelo seedling flower at four months old last spring, so things like this do happen with fruit trees. I wonder if your climate, which has much less chill time than in typical apple growing country, has something to do with it, as well.

Your photographs are good enough to illustrate the plant's precociousness, so I do not see a problem with them.

mangolover143

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #5 on: March 12, 2021, 07:13:21 AM »
Hi,

Thanks for sharing a so exciting and encouraging post of precociousness of apply seedlings, for avid growers from seeds.

I am raising 50+ seedlings of apples, pears, oriental pears, Eurasian pears, persimmons and stone fruits, mostly bought from store or own fruits to be used as future rootstock for experimental purposes. I never encountered this precociousness but I found there are a great diversity of those seedlings as far as vigour, disease resistance and heights are concerned. I have to put some stunted ones and those heavily infected with fungi (mostly apples and seems that pears are immune) to the compost heap as I have limited space.

Please keep us updated. Thanks

D-Grower

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #6 on: March 12, 2021, 08:00:14 AM »
This year I started a bunch of sand pear seedlings for rootstock. However it seems 95% of them got some sort of damping off issue on their stems. A few outright toppled and died but most survive so far. But there's this weird dead looking skin on the little stems of the trees. They are still kicking though. Hopefully as the stem gets larger they will shed off this dead looking bark growth. Surprised it didn't fully kill more of them.

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mangolover143

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #7 on: March 12, 2021, 11:53:13 AM »
Hi D-Grower,

I also germinated quite a number of Oriental pear and Euro pear seedling, viz. Kosui, Deveci, Ya pear, China Crown pear, Taylor's Gold and Red Williams, etc. All got no problems with any that I can observe, but some grow fast and tall, whilst some have stunted growth. Most apple seedlings develop serious white molds even under the very dry SA climate which made me scratching my head! I never use chemicals as I grow everything organically.

So far, I have not succeeded germinating persimmons like Fuju and D. kaki. Have you had experience of raising them from seeds? Kindly share.

I also just got 2 seedlings germinated from a single seed of minneola/Honey Bell that I luckily got from a store-bought fruit which is always seedless. They are growing very slowly, seems do not response to organic pellets. Can you tell how many years it need to take these tangelos to have first fruiting? Thanks

Paul

W.

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #8 on: March 12, 2021, 06:36:06 PM »
Hi D-Grower,

I also germinated quite a number of Oriental pear and Euro pear seedling, viz. Kosui, Deveci, Ya pear, China Crown pear, Taylor's Gold and Red Williams, etc. All got no problems with any that I can observe, but some grow fast and tall, whilst some have stunted growth. Most apple seedlings develop serious white molds even under the very dry SA climate which made me scratching my head! I never use chemicals as I grow everything organically.

So far, I have not succeeded germinating persimmons like Fuju and D. kaki. Have you had experience of raising them from seeds? Kindly share.

I also just got 2 seedlings germinated from a single seed of minneola/Honey Bell that I luckily got from a store-bought fruit which is always seedless. They are growing very slowly, seems do not response to organic pellets. Can you tell how many years it need to take these tangelos to have first fruiting? Thanks

Paul

Your question on tangelo seedlings might be better answered on the citrus part of the forum, but I grow many citrus from seeds, so I will give a short overview of my experience. Tangelos do not seem to grow with any great vigor. I have a half dozen of them that I started growing over two years ago. Not a single one of them is 1' tall (roughly 1/3 of a meter for someone like you who uses the metric system). They do not produce a large number of roots and accordingly, have stayed quite small. I believe, like sweet oranges, they will produce fruit in about eight years; at their current growth rate that seems doubtful. I am hoping that they will eventually start growing more vigorously, though if I can get them to stay small and fruit, that would be the best result for me, since I grow my citrus in containers.

mangolover143

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #9 on: March 12, 2021, 09:27:09 PM »
Thanks for the valuable info unobtainable elsewhere but I also grow all citrus in 20-gal pots due to my ground is of rock formation

Sorry, don't want to hijack the thread.

Galatians522

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #10 on: March 12, 2021, 09:38:22 PM »
When I was a kid we had 3-4 Orlando Tangelos that were grown from seed. I believe they were 6-8 years old when they started fruiting. My Dad had planted them when he moved to Florida from seeds out of a fruit that he really liked. Based on that I know they were not older than 9. They grew to be quite large (bigger than grafted trees) but were planted in the ground. Fruit quality was excellent.

D-Grower

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #11 on: March 12, 2021, 10:44:15 PM »
Really cool to hear y'alls stories of seed grown trees. As far as I know many citrus do take up to or over 8 years to produce fruit from seeds. There are many exceptions though like lemons and kumquats etc being 3-5 years. From the research I've done though it seems with most citrus they do produce decent if not good to excellent quality fruits from seeds but it's the wait time that's undesirable.

I've personally seen over a hundred mature seed grown citrus make good quality fruits from seeds. Also many other species like tropical fruits and stone fruits. Even seen apples turn out good from seeds albeit much less of a chance with heavy out crossers like apples and pears. Still worth your time if you have space though. If you get a "bad" tree you can always graft onto it with good scions. If you get a good fruit then you have a new variety you can name and start passing around yourself which would be awesome to do. Plant them seeds and let's increase our biodiversity we are quickly loosing from lack of such efforts.
Trying to grow it all!

Pandan

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #12 on: March 13, 2021, 02:46:23 AM »
Really cool to hear y'alls stories of seed grown trees. As far as I know many citrus do take up to or over 8 years to produce fruit from seeds. There are many exceptions though like lemons and kumquats etc being 3-5 years. From the research I've done though it seems with most citrus they do produce decent if not good to excellent quality fruits from seeds but it's the wait time that's undesirable.

I've personally seen over a hundred mature seed grown citrus make good quality fruits from seeds. Also many other species like tropical fruits and stone fruits. Even seen apples turn out good from seeds albeit much less of a chance with heavy out crossers like apples and pears. Still worth your time if you have space though. If you get a "bad" tree you can always graft onto it with good scions. If you get a good fruit then you have a new variety you can name and start passing around yourself which would be awesome to do. Plant them seeds and let's increase our biodiversity we are quickly loosing from lack of such efforts.
Exactly how I feel about it!
With seedlings you can think of your chances as: bad, as good as or better than, why not take the risk esp because as you saaid you can graft if it goes to s**t  ;)

I don't have a lot of space in my current yard (and I have been WILDLY branching out in the things I grow the past year) so I plan to learn to graft, select a good base then create multi-varieties trees which I can take seeds from.

850FL

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #13 on: March 17, 2021, 09:50:35 AM »
Yeah, all the minneola seedlings I have going take quite a while to grow any substantial size.
I have gotten quite a few hachiya persimmons to germinate. I like their taste way better than fuyu anyway, but you gotta let them basically ripen to mush
I think a big problem with seed grown apples from grocery stores is that their parent orchards are routinely pollinated with crabapples.. correct me if I’m wrong, pretty sure that’s right though
Apples I have read can have great genetic variation, compared to other fruits.
Anyone able to ID D-Grower’s blooming seedling just based on the color and structure of those leaves/blooms??
« Last Edit: March 17, 2021, 10:00:24 AM by 850FL »

850FL

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #14 on: March 17, 2021, 09:58:33 AM »
This year I started a bunch of sand pear seedlings for rootstock. However it seems 95% of them got some sort of damping off issue on their stems. A few outright toppled and died but most survive so far. But there's this weird dead looking skin on the little stems of the trees. They are still kicking though. Hopefully as the stem gets larger they will shed off this dead looking bark growth. Surprised it didn't fully kill more of them.

Spray with sulfur or copper. Probably some fungal issue. If you’re growing in peat, could be lack of nutrients..

W.

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #15 on: March 17, 2021, 11:52:53 AM »
Yeah, all the minneola seedlings I have going take quite a while to grow any substantial size.
I have gotten quite a few hachiya persimmons to germinate. I like their taste way better than fuyu anyway, but you gotta let them basically ripen to mush
I think a big problem with seed grown apples from grocery stores is that their parent orchards are routinely pollinated with crabapples.. correct me if I’m wrong, pretty sure that’s right though
Apples I have read can have great genetic variation, compared to other fruits.
Anyone able to ID D-Grower’s blooming seedling just based on the color and structure of those leaves/blooms??

Glad to see someone else likes hachiya persimmons better than fuyus. I see many people raving about fuyu persimmons, and I wonder what exactly they have eaten, because I have had fuyus and thought them bland and uninteresting. Hachiyas are delicious, if they have been properly ripened.

850FL

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #16 on: March 17, 2021, 02:31:44 PM »
Yeah, all the minneola seedlings I have going take quite a while to grow any substantial size.
I have gotten quite a few hachiya persimmons to germinate. I like their taste way better than fuyu anyway, but you gotta let them basically ripen to mush
I think a big problem with seed grown apples from grocery stores is that their parent orchards are routinely pollinated with crabapples.. correct me if I’m wrong, pretty sure that’s right though
Apples I have read can have great genetic variation, compared to other fruits.
Anyone able to ID D-Grower’s blooming seedling just based on the color and structure of those leaves/blooms??

Glad to see someone else likes hachiya persimmons better than fuyus. I see many people raving about fuyu persimmons, and I wonder what exactly they have eaten, because I have had fuyus and thought them bland and uninteresting. Hachiyas are delicious, if they have been properly ripened.
Totally bro. Fuyu is like the Tommy Atkins of persimmons

A couple months ago, after the hurricane passed, people had big brush piles stacked up. I locked myself out of my car that day and was looking for a clothes hanger or wire to get back in. I was gettin hungry too and my card was in the car. Well, I stumbled across a brush pile with a snapped hachiya tree. The fruits still on it were ripe so I stuffed both pockets full and had some to eat right there. Delicious- my favorite persimmon. Then 2 feet away on the ground was the wire clothes hanger I needed. That was truly a blessing
« Last Edit: March 17, 2021, 02:45:28 PM by 850FL »

W.

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #17 on: March 17, 2021, 03:08:47 PM »
Yeah, all the minneola seedlings I have going take quite a while to grow any substantial size.
I have gotten quite a few hachiya persimmons to germinate. I like their taste way better than fuyu anyway, but you gotta let them basically ripen to mush
I think a big problem with seed grown apples from grocery stores is that their parent orchards are routinely pollinated with crabapples.. correct me if I’m wrong, pretty sure that’s right though
Apples I have read can have great genetic variation, compared to other fruits.
Anyone able to ID D-Grower’s blooming seedling just based on the color and structure of those leaves/blooms??

Glad to see someone else likes hachiya persimmons better than fuyus. I see many people raving about fuyu persimmons, and I wonder what exactly they have eaten, because I have had fuyus and thought them bland and uninteresting. Hachiyas are delicious, if they have been properly ripened.
Totally bro. Fuyu is like the Tommy Atkins of persimmons

A couple months ago, after the hurricane passed, people had big brush piles stacked up. I locked myself out of my car that day and was looking for a clothes hanger or wire to get back in. I was gettin hungry too and my card was in the car. Well, I stumbled across a brush pile with a snapped hachiya tree. The fruits still on it were ripe so I stuffed both pockets full and had some to eat right there. Delicious- my favorite persimmon. Then 2 feet away on the ground was the wire clothes hanger I needed. That was truly a blessing

The universe provides (sometimes).

850FL

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Re: Apple seedling flowering super young
« Reply #18 on: March 17, 2021, 08:58:48 PM »
I see it differently