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Post by silverseeds on Aug 11, 2009 23:28:26 GMT -5
Okay I dont know much about apple trees besides that everyone uses grafted trees to ge the best apples, and that you need atleast three.
I dont want to use grafted trees. My intention is to let the trees get about6 to 8 feet then cut them down. It will grow into a bush as opposed to a tree. Much more manageable for my conditions. Im going to do this with peaches and pears as well. The reason I want bushes instead of trees is to do with water. I will likely have to give them supplemental water most years which is in short supply. so I can water multiple apple or peach bushes instead of a single tree.
People on Idig seemed to think it wasnt worth it only grafted trees are worthwhile, but Im going to do it anyway. So please give me any advice you could. As to how I will decided which trees are producing a good fruit. I dont care how much easier grafted trees would be. Im not going to use them. Unless there my own grafts way in the future, whn I have a few solid bush/trees of my own.
So what advise for someone who is going to do this from seeds from various apples. And peaches and pears also.
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Post by grungy on Aug 12, 2009 0:09:14 GMT -5
The only advice I can offer is to let your whip get only 3-3 1/2 feet tall and the cut off the growing tip. This will cause the "tree" to put out your branches much lower. Continue topping the ends of each of the branches when they get as high as the central leader, or as long as you would like.
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 12, 2009 0:18:05 GMT -5
okay thats much shorter then I would have guessed. thanks for the advice....
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Post by grunt on Aug 12, 2009 0:25:16 GMT -5
If you are going to bushes only for the final size of the trees, you might want to rethink your dislike for grafted trees, as one of the popular root stock for grafting is a dwarfing root stock. As for letting the trees get to 6 or 8 feet before topping, I would start at about 2 to 3 feet, and encourage multi leads from there, letting each get about 2 feet long before topping them into more leaders. You likely won't get large fruit as a result, but will get about the same total poundage, in smaller fruit. It will make it a bit harder to provide support for all of the branches when they load up with fruit, and mean that you will have to thin a bit more rigorously to keep the branches from being pulled down. I have a couple of trees in my orchard that will make a good demonstration photo of what I mean. I'll try to get some photos in the next couple of days and post them. What you will see is a result of not getting the pruning done last fall or this spring, and being too busy to get the thinning done this spring/summer.
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 12, 2009 1:43:42 GMT -5
that would be great Id love to see that. could you tell me the basics of pruning fruit trees? or direct me to a source of that info....
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Post by canadamike on Aug 12, 2009 1:58:51 GMT -5
google, my friend. google. And you can also youtube your way out of this easily, plenty of videos...
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 12, 2009 2:06:30 GMT -5
When I go to youtube, it seems to take me an hour to find one practical nugget of info. As for just scouring the internet, kinda seems to me like a thousand copycat pages, who knows who actually did it themselves. Id rather ask someone who does it themselves. lol. Busy people will ignore me, and peop-le wh like apples might stop and tell me in 3 minutes what Id have to search half a day to find, AND I know this person actually did it themselves. Thats what is so good about this place to me.....
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Post by PatrickW on Aug 12, 2009 3:34:14 GMT -5
It really helps a lot to have someone who knows how to prune trees stand next to you and walk you through it.
Basically, there are 5 or 6 things you need to keep in mind and watch out for, but a lot of pruning simply comes down to what you want to do with the tree. Trees and fruit bushes grow more vigorously after they've been pruned, so if you cut away roughly 1/3 of the tree, you will accomplish this anyway. Most trees can also be cut back significantly more or less than 1/3 and still give a good result by the way. Certainly if you have a young tree it will probably be less, and an old tree that has grown out of control will probably need a lot more than 1/3 cut away.
Most fruit forms on parts of the tree that are 2-3 years old, so you want to maintain a good balance between old and new wood. You also want to reduce complexity, forks on forks on forks. You want to create space in crowded places in the tree, and ensure no branches are touching or crossing one another. Often along the trunk or large branches you will see a lot of 'stubble', and it's a good idea to remove this unless you are trying to encourage the tree to branch in that spot. It's also a good idea to cut a few inches off the ends of all branches that remain.
Above all, you want the tree to look good when you're done, and not seem lopsided. Be sure to stand back, look at the tree from a distance and think carefully before you make any big cuts.
This is probably not really enough of a pruning guide by itself, but it's enough to get you thinking...
By the way, I'm also going to try some ungrafted trees this year. The reason is I want to get several, and I see people offering self propagated trees on the local equivalent to Ebay for next to nothing. Like you, if I decide I want grafted trees later, I will do it myself.
One piece of advice however is to not grow anything from seed unless you are experimenting. Apples and most other fruits don't grow true to type, and will generally produce completely uninteresting plants. For best results, you should always start with known varieties, then propagate by layering or other techniques.
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 12, 2009 3:52:35 GMT -5
Do you mean I buy seeds from a certain place and not various apples as I have been doing, or small trees? Really I want to learn to start from scracth and expand at some point I intended to expand the grove from seeds from the better of the trees. So this isnt a workable plan you think?
are pears and peaches that hard?
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 12, 2009 3:59:07 GMT -5
I was kinda hoping I could start ten, and get five that produce, and go from there. How did our ancestors do it if not like this? what am I missing here?
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Post by PatrickW on Aug 12, 2009 4:10:17 GMT -5
The plan is okay, you just need to reconsider how you are going to propagate the trees. Rather than seeds, you should try layering techniques. I understand this can be difficult with fruit trees, and I've never tried myself, so you better ask some other people about this. Basically you need to (in the winter when the plant is dormant) bend over a branch into the ground, score it a little bit at the lowest point, then let it sit until it develops roots. Then you can dig it up and separate it from parent tree. Sometimes you can do something similar by burying the plant extra deep in the ground, which causes it to send out side shoots that can be cut away later.
I understand you can also sometimes root cuttings, but you need to use a lot of cuttings because the failure rate is very high.
And yes, the tree you start with should be gotten from someone else who has propagated it in this way or grafted a scion to root stock.
I think this all applies to pears and peaches as well as apples.
What I understand is if you grow from seed you have about a 1:100 or even a 1:200 chance of something nice coming from it. This is how fruit trees are breed, and if you want to experiment you can do this. There is the story of Johnny Appleseed, which someone probably knows better than me. Basically this is why there are so many terrific heirloom apple trees around in the US, because part of claiming a plot of land in the old frontier days was proving you were using it, and apparently an aspect of this was having some apple trees. No one cared if the apples tasted good, they just needed trees. Apparently one man in particular (Johnny, I guess) was instrumental in planting these trees all across America...
Some gardeners feel it's their duty to plant some fruit seeds or pits, just to participate in the age old tradition of breeding, even if their chances of success are small, the rewards of success are huge -- a new fruit tree!
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 12, 2009 4:22:45 GMT -5
okay I have heard of that technic, I just didnt know the name. I never knew the chances were that low. Thats kind of amazing actually.
I wouldnt know it wasnt a good tree until after I grew it for years, so thats a toughy. BUT if If I get lucky I would have a new parent tree....
So do you have even a remote idea of how variable the genetics of apples are. Like if I had a couple hundred seeds, from about six varieties, would I eventually find a good tree given enough time to grow them all out, even though the seeds are from similar sources?
I guess I might have to look into getting a few fruit trees, but I dont have the money now. 1 of 200 is not good odds at all though.....
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Post by PatrickW on Aug 12, 2009 5:00:47 GMT -5
Honestly, I don't know anything about apple tree genetics.
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Post by robertb on Aug 12, 2009 17:41:13 GMT -5
A lot of people used to plant apple pips, and keep the tree if it turned out to be any good. There are still a lot of old tres around in the UK that can't be identified, and may well have resulted from these pips. There are two potential problems with ungrafted tress; they take a long time (maybe 20 years or so) to come into fruit, and they grow rather large. If you want bushes within a reasonable time, go for grafted trees, and try a couple of ungrafted ones as well, to see what happens.
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Post by silverseeds on Aug 12, 2009 21:34:30 GMT -5
okay so going from seed certainly seems out of the question, but does anyone know if I can start from just one tree? and do as patrick said, and bury some branches and try to get a few more trees to start?
In this book I have about the gardens of the tribes that are from this area(canyon gardens GREAT book), they mention when the spanish came they had peach pits that were capable of growing from the pits true to type. And were cold tolerant, does anyone know where I could look for those. It doesnt seem anyone sells them that way. They actually did bring grapes and apples trees with them. The grapes they grafted to local grape stock the apples they grew the trees they brought (which apparently are still alive) and peaches they specify they had ones that grew true to type from the pits. Id really love to find those so it will be easier to spread my orchard, once I have fruit. There has to be a way to find out what type of peaches those were.
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