Forum home› Tools and techniques
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Apple pip growing

seacrowsseacrows Posts: 234
in Tools and techniques
Walking through the churchyard this morning I saw the two apple trees have dropped most of their apples now. The trees have got to be 100+ years old and easily 30ft x 20ft. The apples every year are left to rot, and then mown by the groundkeepers. The apples are small, bright scarlet and easily bruised, but I looked around, found a larger than average unblemished one and had a bite.

!! Incredibly sweet, really appley, pink flesh. BEST APPLE EVER

How do I grow this variety for my garden?



I did grab some more windfalls, looking guiltily over my shoulder, it feels like apple stealing. Can I grow from the pips, do the pips need chilling, will growing from the pips produce the same as the mother tree, or do I really need cuttings?

Gulp, I'm willing to snarf a couple of unwanted apples, but cuttings would require talking to the church management people.

And isn't pink flesh one of those newly introduced apple variety 'unique selling point's? Not such a terribly new variation after all.  

Posts

  • LiriodendronLiriodendron Posts: 8,328
    You can grow pips from your apples but they are unlikely to produce the same apples as the snaffled ones...  apple varieties are budded or grafted onto a rootstock so you get fruit earlier, and to control the size and health of the tree.  You could try growing a cutting or two though, if you can sweet-talk the trees' owners.  Hardwood cuttings taken in winter might root, if you're lucky...  as for the pink flesh, a good "Discovery" apple - not a new variety - has a pink flush to it.  There are probably others, too.   :)
    Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
  • seacrowsseacrows Posts: 234
    edited September 2020
    I've been looking around the internet, the consensus seems to be the older the tree, the less likely cuttings are to root. Still, there's no harm in trying. For my best chance I need a 'dormant' tree, so I'll give it a bit longer, at least until all the apples have fallen before advancing with the snippers.

    The pip will be at least 50% of the parent characteristics/genes, so worth trying. I might be lucky and the tree is self-fertile, so a pip would be very similar to the parent. Can only hope.

    Thanks for the replys.
  • floraliesfloralies Posts: 2,718
    You can send samples off for identification, I have sent you a link I hope it helps!

    https://www.brogdalecollections.org/fruit-identification/
  • strelitzia32strelitzia32 Posts: 758
    I think you realize this anyway, but it's probably going to be easier/better to just buy a grafted, growing tree that has the characteristics you want. It's going to take years before you get a tree from pip anywhere near big enough to get fruit from, and when the fruit appears there's no guarantee it will be decent, let alone a copy of the original. And Sod's Law means you'll probably end up with the height genetics from the graft and the fruit genetics from the root stock, leaving you with a 50 foot tree that gives 1 apple  :D

    But if you want to do it as an experiment, good luck!
Sign In or Register to comment.