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Are you sure? I seem to remember my grandfather taking me to transplant saplings that grew from seeds from fallen apples from around a few trees. I was young,

by ci5er 8y ago

Are you sure? I seem to remember my grandfather taking me to transplant saplings that grew from seeds from fallen apples from around a few trees. I was young, and my alcoholic memory is faulty, but I don't recall any grafting. (This was in the blast plains of Wyoming, so, not near the idyllic nooks of the Idaho Rockies)

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
You can grow from seed, and they do inherit characteristics of parents, but they are also very, very variable. They can vary to such an extent you will often get a completely new variety. Some will be closer. Cider is perhaps less dependent on consistency, particularly rough cider, than you'd want from eating apples. They are not consistent like the seeds of many other plants. Apples seeds seem to produce more variation than other fruits, though other fruits share this tendency. Still, if you want an orchard of consistently good cider apples you'd plant grafts from a consistently good cider apple on a suitable root (dwarf, cold-resistant and so on). If you hope to find a new, interesting, variety or can live with that variation you'd plant many seeded trees and see what fruit results. Then keep, and propagate, the good ones. :) More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation
- ci5er 8y ago
  Thank you. We probably ended up with 10 or 14 trees in total (there would have been more, but crop dusters in the north of our place kept not dusting low enough and their herbicides would kill our trees ... which is a travesty on the blast plains, but what are you going to do?), and we didn't notice a heck of a lot of variability, but there was certainly some. They were mostly all medium-ish sized and red-ish - and only fruited once per year. They tasted kind of like a McIntosh I guess? But you are right - they were a lot more variable between themselves than the cherries or (say) the berries or rhubarbs. FWIW: I wasn't particularly interested in cider apples - I was interested in the claim that apples can't be grown and kept consistent from seeds.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Interesting. When I was a young un a relative did something similar, after they were winding down the orchards, thanks to changing markets. I remember more than a couple as inedible failures that were dug up, but came from good eating varieties. A short time later all except just a couple were gone and he was growing house plants and for garden centres. Now I'm past my knowledge or knew less than I thought I did. Maybe some parent varieties vary more wildly than others?
    - ci5er 8y ago
      Maybe. I don't know. Your comment simply caught my "is that so?" filter. I'm going to have to go learn more. Thank you.

by ci5er 8y ago

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

You can grow from seed, and they do inherit characteristics of parents, but they are also very, very variable. They can vary to such an extent you will often get a completely new variety. Some will be closer. Cider is perhaps less dependent on consistency, particularly rough cider, than you'd want from eating apples. They are not consistent like the seeds of many other plants. Apples seeds seem to produce more variation than other fruits, though other fruits share this tendency. Still, if you want an orchard of consistently good cider apples you'd plant grafts from a consistently good cider apple on a suitable root (dwarf, cold-resistant and so on). If you hope to find a new, interesting, variety or can live with that variation you'd plant many seeded trees and see what fruit results. Then keep, and propagate, the good ones. :) More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Cultivation

ci5er 8y ago
Thank you. We probably ended up with 10 or 14 trees in total (there would have been more, but crop dusters in the north of our place kept not dusting low enough and their herbicides would kill our trees ... which is a travesty on the blast plains, but what are you going to do?), and we didn't notice a heck of a lot of variability, but there was certainly some. They were mostly all medium-ish sized and red-ish - and only fruited once per year. They tasted kind of like a McIntosh I guess? But you are right - they were a lot more variable between themselves than the cherries or (say) the berries or rhubarbs. FWIW: I wasn't particularly interested in cider apples - I was interested in the claim that apples can't be grown and kept consistent from seeds.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Interesting. When I was a young un a relative did something similar, after they were winding down the orchards, thanks to changing markets. I remember more than a couple as inedible failures that were dug up, but came from good eating varieties. A short time later all except just a couple were gone and he was growing house plants and for garden centres. Now I'm past my knowledge or knew less than I thought I did. Maybe some parent varieties vary more wildly than others?
  - ci5er 8y ago
    Maybe. I don't know. Your comment simply caught my "is that so?" filter. I'm going to have to go learn more. Thank you.