If you buy local apples late in the season, months after harvest, they’ve already been kept under refrigeration for many months. Some sources say as low as 30%, though I’d guess ours were more like 60% at least, so clearly, it’s variable. That’s a good thing since apple seeds have a very low germination rate. Store it in the back of the refrigerator, checking on the towel every week or so to make sure it’s moist.Īt the end of 6 weeks, some of the seeds may have started to sprout already. Place apple seeds in a moist paper towel, and then put that paper towel inside a plastic bag, leaving it open just a crack for air exchange. The seeds need to be kept under moist refrigeration for at least 6 weeks before they’re planted. The plant evolved this seed dormancy to make sure the seeds don’t sprout before the spring, but you can trick them by creating an artificial “winter” in your refrigerator. That’s one reason there are wild apple trees scattered everywhere throughout the Northeast, but far fewer in areas with very mild winters. This is actually tricky in really warm locations out west, where winter doesn’t get cold enough to break the seed dormancy. Any seed that fell on a fertile spot, and then wasn’t eaten by squirrels or other animals, will sprout in the spring once temperatures warm up…provided winter is consistently cold. In nature, this happens naturally outdoors over the winter. The seeds stay dormant until they’ve been “cold stratified” or chilled for a minimum of 6 weeks. The fruit naturally ripens in the autumn, but if the apple seedlings sprouted right away, they wouldn’t be strong enough before winter to survive. It’s a defense mechanism built into the seed itself, ensuring that the seed doesn’t sprout until winter is over. Preparing Apple Seeds for PlantingĪpple seeds need cold stratification to break dormancy. And at the very least they’ll help pollinate our other tastier trees, so it’s a win either way. There’s a good chance many of them will be best suited for hard cider or to please the deer as windfalls, but even then, they’ll still feed the bees with abundant blossoms and nectar in the spring. Since a seedling tree will have some of the characteristics of its parents, we chose the seeds from our very favorite varieties to plant. This improves the chances that any given seed will bear offspring with good characteristics. Since all the trees were in an heirloom orchard, there’s no telling who the second parent tree was…but it’s less likely that the father tree was a wild crab apple, and more likely that it was another tasty heirloom. One year we bought more than 30 apple varieties from a local heirloom apple orchard and did a big apple taste test. Those that were less tasty when eaten out of hand went into hard cider, which requires a certain percentage of high-tannin or high-acid apples to brew properly. Planting an apple from seed is like playing the lottery, and since you’re likely going to compost that apple core anyway, you’ve got nothing to lose.Ī few hundred years ago, settlers carried with them apple seeds and started seedling orchards all over the Northeast, and those same orchards became the parents of many of the heirloom varieties I now treasure. The thing is…all the tastiest apple varieties were a seedling at some point in history. ![]() Humans tend to want predictability, and for that reason, apple trees are cloned by grafting rather than starting from seed. The main reason apples aren’t grown from seed is that they don’t “come true to seed.” Just like humans, the offspring may have some resemblance to their parents, but with their own flavor and habits. From there, you have a tree that may bear for centuries. Give an apple tree seedling 3-4 years, and it’ll catch up to and pass a potted transplant in size. Apple seeds are easy to grow at home with the proper preparation, and seedlings are often more vigorous than their grafted nursery counterparts.
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