Planting apple trees from seeds

How to Grow Apple Trees From Seed

Introduction: How to Grow Apple Trees From Seed

Hello! This tutorial will show you how to grow apple trees from seed.

First, here are a few things you should know:
-If you grow an apple tree from seed, it probably won’t grow the same type of tree. This is because apple seeds don’t grow true, which means that every seed is unique.

-Since you’re growing a whole new variety of apple tree, it’s possible it might take 10-15 years to actually fruit, if it even does fruit. You aren’t guaranteed that it will!

-Statistically, only about 30% of the seeds successfully germinate. And some that successfully germinate may not live long afterwards. Don’t be scared off, when I started I had around twenty seeds and after a month i ended up with only five seedlings. This is completely natural, don’t give up!

-If your trees do eventually produce fruit, you aren’t guaranteed they will taste good. Since you’ve created a whole new variety, there’s no sure way to tell!

Step 1: Germinating the Seeds

To start, you’re going to need to gather a few things:

-A plastic sandwich bag
-Somewhere cold, like a refrigerator
-Paper towel/napkins
-Apples!

First, you need to gather the apple seeds. Some apples may only have a couple, while others may have six or seven! I usually use four or five apples worth. Whatever you do, make sure not to damage the seeds, as they most likely won’t ever grow. It’s best if you cut the apple with an apple cutter, or eat the apple down to the core then split it in half with force. You can use a knife if you wish, but it might damage the seeds. Once you’ve gathered your apple seeds, make sure to wash any remains of the fruit so that they don’t rot. I find it easiest to use a small strainer, so that you don’t lose any of the seeds.

Now that your seeds are prepped and ready, you will need to prepare your paper towel. All you need to do is stick it under a faucet so it becomes slightly damp. Then you will need to squeeze most of the water out so there isn’t too much moisture. Once you’ve done that, you can place the seeds on the napkin, and then fold it up and place it inside of the sandwich bag.

Now that it’s in the sandwich bag, make sure it’s sealed up and place it inside of your refrigerator. You can expect to wait up to two months before you see any signs of growth. Essentially what you’re doing is simulating nature. When apples mature and fall from the tree, they decompose yet the seeds remain on the ground. Unless animals get to them first, they remain on the ground throughout winter. Once spring hits, the seeds come out of dormancy and start to sprout! Essentially, they’re programmed to germinate after a period of coldness. Make sure to check on them around once a week, and if any seeds start to rot, it would be best to remove them and replace the paper towel so the rest of the seeds don’t rot as well. Also keep an eye on the moisture level, if it seems a little dry you should add a small amount of water to it.

I checked on my seeds after a month, and it turns out they all sprouted! But don’t be surprised if they don’t before, or even after the first two months. If they haven’t, it’s okay! They really aren’t supposed to sprout yet. Take the bag out of the refrigerator and place it in a sunny location. South facing windowsills work best, but any sunny location will do. Blow some air into it (which creates a mini greenhouse), and then seal it up.

Leave them in the bag until they sprout. They should start sprouting within two weeks. If they haven’t all sprouted within a month and a half, the ones that haven’t probably never will. You can pitch them if you wish, or just leave them to see if they finally sprout.

Step 2: Planting the Seeds

After the seeds have sprouted, you can plant them right away. Generally, it doesn’t matter what direction you plant them in as eventually they will make their way up, but it’s best to plant them root-end down. (That little green bit poking out of the seed? That’s the root!)

It would be best to plant them individually in a cell tray, but if you wish to plant them in one pot until they’re more established that works as well! Generally you can fit three or four in a decently sized pot, just make sure they have room to grow as once you have them covered it’s best to leave them sit until they’re much more mature.

I planted mine about half an inch deep, but I wouldn’t go much further as the seeds will probably die before they finally poke out of the dirt. Keep these seedlings inside for the first month or two, as they’re quite fragile and will need some time to grow.

Step 3: Saplings!

With luck, it’s been a few months and your saplings have grown quite a bit! Now it’s time to think about planting them outside. The best time to plant them depends on when you first started the seeds. It’s generally a good idea to plant them in the spring (once all dangers of frost have passed) so that they have the whole summer to establish a good root system before winter, but it’s also alright to plant mid-summer. However I would not recommend planting any later as the cold temperatures of winter will most likely kill them if they aren’t established! If you started too late in the year, the plants should survive the winter inside. Once the saplings are a foot tall, they should be alright to plant. I would put some sort of mesh around them at first, because I learned from first-hand experience that deer enjoy the saplings quite a lot!

Now, as I originally stated, the seeds never grow true to their parent plant, so there’s no telling what kind of apple you’re going to end up with, if one at all. Most people who grow apple trees from seed are only doing so for a rootstock, which is used to graft a branch from a specific variety of tree onto to create another tree of the same fruit. If you wish to learn more about grafting, Progressive Farmer has a fantastic tutorial that can be found Here.

Enjoy your trees, and good luck!

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Growing Apple Trees From Seed.

Introduction: Growing Apple Trees From Seed.

Hello.
I am going to tell you how to grow apple trees from seed. This is a lot more complicated than just throwing a few seeds in the ground, but with my help I can show you how.

Step 1: Materials Needed

You will need:
An apple
Compost
Pots
Paper towel
plastic bag
Knife
Later On:
Grafting tape or Cling film
Grafting Wax or Masking tape

Step 2: Getting the Seeds

Now, Carefully cut down the middle of an apple and take out the seeds. You may need a few apples always remember on average only 30% of your seeds will germinate.

Step 3: Getting the Seeds to Germinate

Now we need to get our or paper towel and wrap our seeds in them. Wet the paper towel and put it in the plastic bag. Make sure the plastic bag is sealed tight, and put it in the fridge. Your seeds should take about a month to germinate but check every few weeks and wet again if dry. Your seeds will start to have little white sprouts coming out of them soon enough thats when you know there ready for planting.

Step 4: Planting Seeds

Once the seeds have germinated just drop them into any pots about 1 — 2″ deep and cover in good compost. Then just watch them grow.

Step 5: The Most Important Step: Grafting

This step is vital or you apple trees will not produce any apples.
First wait until your apple trees are about 30-60 cm high.(Like in picture)
Now there are many different methods of grafting apple trees but the one I use and find most helpful is the «Whip and Tongue» graft.

Use pictures to help with the graft. Pictures used on random pieces of wood for an example.
Firstly you get a piece of wood (Scion wood) from the variety of apple you want.
Then you cut down at an angle on wood.
Now make an identical cut on the apple tree.
Then cut downwards on the sliced wood. Do this on both tree and scion wood.
Then push together and wrap with cling film and then masking tape.
Done.

Step 6: Watch for Results Some Will Be Unsuccessful.

Watch closely for results if you graft is growing leaves then it is successful if it isn’t it probably isn’t successful, After 1-3 months take off the grafting tape.

Step 7: Watch Your Lovely Apple Tree Grow.

Thanks for reading my instructable.

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199 Comments

Question 1 year ago on Step 2

I have an apple tree seedling and he’s been 2 inches for the last year.
All he does is sprout new leafs and that’s it.
Any idea why he’s so tiny and refuses to grow?
I have an apple tree seedling and he’s been 2 inches for the last year.
All he does is sprout new leafs and that’s it.
Any idea why he’s so tiny and refuses to grow?

Tip 1 year ago on Step 4

You can add some Epsom salt mixed with water but only 1 tbs of Epsom salt

There are a lot of misconceptions and errors in this thread, and some good stuff too. The article is really about growing apple root stock from seeds in order to graft on a variety that you like, such as pink lady, Wickson, etc. Nothing wrong with that. People used to do this all the time. If these seeds were allowed to grow out and produce fruit instead of grafting them to another variety, each one would produce a unique new variety of apple, which may or may not be good and may or may not resemble the original parent.

Most of what you read or hear about growing new varieties from seed is very negative. Michael Pollan in particular has done a great disservice by blugeoning home the message in his book Botany of Desire that it is almost impossible to grow really good apples from seed . The experience of many people disproves that notion though. For instance, my friend Freddy Menge has been growing seedlings and says that more of the apples he grows from seed are worth eating than not. and he’s a picky apple collector. My very first open pollinated apple seedling to fruit is quite promising and I happily ate all of them. I named it BITE ME! for all the people that say it can’t be done. I have over 100 intentionally cross pollinated seedlings growing and more coming this year. If you want to know more about growing apples from seed intentionally to produce new varieties, I’m producing a youtube video series that follows my efforts and shows how I do everything. I hope to start getting fruit from those this year.

In short, I think more people should be growing fruit from seed and a little intention in selection of parents can probably go a long way toward skewing results in our favor.

Apple Breeding video playlist:

Reply 1 year ago

Awesome!! awesome advice, I will definitely be following your YouTube channel! I have a three month old Apple tree sitting in my window, I sprouted the seeds early April.

Reply 1 year ago

Thankyou for this excellent resource! I am a horticulturist with very little apple experience, but keen to breed from seed selectively to suit my climate just because its a challenge and because i have never done it. My climate is tropical to sub tropical but I reckon if I move far enough in land I will get lower night time temperatures.

Reply 1 year ago

Agree. The worst that would happen is that inferior apples could be made into cider (preferably hard).

Reply 3 years ago

Thanks 4 the positive vibes n video efforts. I’ll check it out later 🙂 Americans r raised 2 go 2 the store & buy a bag of apples. Unfortunately, it’s not in r vocabulary 2 «grow your own trees from seed. » I only started that journey recently as my mom has a little orchard in her backyard. I want 2 leave an even bigger orchard 4 r next generation (my daughter & nephews) plus teach the kids in r family 2 b self reliant in the process. Part of the problem is that we’re raised in such a commercialized atmosphere that we don’t know anything other than pre-packaged foods. which is ruining r overall health & quality of life. We CAN grow r own trees, but the pioneers of r time r being totally discouraged online. Only the serious rebels don’t care what others r saying & r going 4 it anyway. I’m 1 of those ppl. bound & determined 2 do it anyway because my daughter deserves 2 learn how 2 really feed herself & her future family. Doing nothing is not an option. We gotta try. R great grandparents didn’t bring r ancestors into this world going 2 a store n buying a bag of apples. We need 2 take this «do it anyway despite what u hear» approach in more avenues of r lives. Thanks 4 the encouragement! Keep it up please!

Reply 3 years ago

Reply 5 years ago

I think you should read or perhaps reread Michael Pollans’ book Botany of Desire he actually credits John Chapman or people like him with spreading and nurturing apple seeds which have led to most known American varieties.Every garden/Hort/herbal/plant book that I have read that talks about planting seeds mentions 1in 50000 apple seeds will produce an apple as good as either parent. Pollan does not walk that line in his book.As a side note it I have spent a lot of time looking for someone that has actually run the experiment. Gathering 50,000 apple seeds grown and collected under the same growing conditions then planted and germinated under the same conditions and then waited the 3-15 years for the trees to fruit etc,etc. Does anyone actually have that much time, money and land to perform this experiment? I would love to see the results.

Reply 3 years ago

Reply 3 years ago

I did re-read it and he states repeatedly that the odds are enormously against getting anything good to eat. The relevant quotes are here:

It is very overstated and the entire chapter is wrapped around the mistaken idea that almost all apples from seed are not worth growing for anything but cider. That was the message. He mistakenly picked up that idea and ran with it. his point was that almost all the apples from seed sucked and were good for only cider and it was only by sheer numbers that new varieties happened. He may not have understood at the time either just how many apples sprung from that chaos of seeding planting. It wasn’t just seedlings planted to grow as seedlings, but seedlings were used as rootstocks then and often ended up overgrowing the top, or the top might die. Many good apples have also always come from hedgerows. I know people that hunt hedgerows for worthwhile apples The 1 in 1000’s thing derives from the commercial breeding paradigm where the number of criteria an apple has to meet has become very high, so very few apples make the grade. As home growers we don’t have so many criteria to meet.

Regarding an experiment, we can do the same experiment in small numbers. I know people with various numbers of seedling trees. All we need is for them to report what percentage are worth growing and eating. All results from anyone growing a number of seedlings has been pretty encouraging. It’s a gamble for sure, but it’s not the dismal odds we are often told.

Pollan is an intellectual and academic. He decided to write about something he didn’t know anything about and ended up building a case on a fundamental error. That isn’t that surprising given the prevalence of the misunderstood 1 in thousands thing, but it’s unfortunate, because millions of people read that and they frequently cite him to make the case that it’s a waste of time to grow apples from seed.

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