Propigating Orchard and Nursery stock from seed...

[jocelyn]

Many commercial apples come from orchards that use crab apples as the pollen parent, because you only need a few crabs to get lots of pollen. Your gala seedling might have a very hardy male parent, who knows?

I have beautiful arcade apples, and the seedlings from those make about an 80 percent sized tree. I could save you seeds in the fall if you like. I'm in Canada too.
Ag Canada keeps a gene bank and will send out scions, I'll post the link when I find it again. Grin.ca, I better check.

[jocelyn]

Never fire off a link before the tea has kicked in, LOL
Try this

pgrc3.agr.gc.ca/acc/search-recherche_e.html

[prairiegardens]

Apr 25, 2017 15:22:32 GMT -5 walt said:

I've never tried lemons from seeds.
Many citrus will produce in 3 gallon pots.
Small fruit doesn't usually come from dwarf trees, but lemons might be an exception.  Some "lemons" are actually lemonquats, kumquat x lemon.  If that is what you have, it will be a smaller tree that is more cold tolerant that true lemons, and produce sooner.
Many citrus, including most (but not all) lemons, come true from seed.
Good luck

I'd never heard of lemonquats before, perhaps these are seeds from those! They are certainly much sweeter than a "normal" lemon. Since those are hybrid apparently, it'll be interesting to see what they turn out like..I saw an ad for lemonquats seedlings for $50 to $100 and these - if that's what they are- were as easy as a pepper to start, crazy. So last year this time I was still looking for a Meyer lemon and now have five Meyers from cuttings from totally ineffectual attempts to shape by pruning, plus all these unknown seedlings. Locally produced lemonade!!

[prairiegardens]

Picked a couple of pear tree starts at the scion exchange, both of them are putting out new growth but one the older leaves are drooping and slightly curled. They haven't been watered or anything (I've only had them a week) because the one is growing like gangbusters and the soil in both is equally moist. These are said to be experimental trees from Russia, needing some help for the first couple of years and then capable of handling -45c so I really don't want to lose either. Hardy pears are not easy to come by for the prairies. Should I be worried? Should I be doing something and if so what? Might it just be reacting to a possible chill or draft on the 10 hour ride home? These are basically rooted scion size plants started this winter in a greenhouse, undoubtedly heated, and the back of the minivan got pretty cool when I stopped a couple of times on the way home.

[jocelyn]

I brought home a bur oak on Saturday from the nut meeting. It was also greenhouse grown,not hardened off because there was no time. It has bronzing of the leaves, slight edge cupping and looks like it got a chill.

Try babying it a bit and just wait and see what it does. The ones I got prior years did recover, perhaps your will too.

[prairiegardens]

I lost one of the pears, my own fault. I didn't have the right soil mix and although the top inch was dry, the root area wasn't and overwatering apparently gave it root rot. The other one coped and got planted outside but we've had rain rain rain and the soil is clay, not the best in the first place, so hoping it's going to be able to cope. Watering things in pots is something that's a bit of a learning curve, at least for me. In the meantime

I have 8 healthy seedlings from the "sweet" lemons I got, and am presently trying to sprout some oranges that are smallish mandarin type oranges with a loose peel. They were in an unlabelled bag, the only similar ones in the store were labelled satsuma but supposedly those are seedless..

The little lemon trees are so far looking delightful! At 4 -6 inches they are all branching enthusiastically, unlike my Meyer lemon that won't fill out no matter how I cut it, the branch just starts again just below the cut and keeps on. I lost a couple of the cuttings from them, not sure why, they just seemed to quit. The two largest cuttings are doing fine but also look as though they'd rather be tall and lanky rather than at all bushy like the mystery lemon seedlings.

Someone told me with great authority that lemons raised from seed never fruit, which is a bewildering thought. Maybe if they're normally full sized trees grown indoors half the year?  Or maybe that's along the same lines as people confidently stating that seed from hybrid plants won't grow? I've run into that one more than once.

I'm just hoping I don't kill these seedlings, they are very pretty just as a plant Even if they never produce a thing they're worth growing but it would be would so wonderful if they ended up both miniature and productive!

The orange pips are looking as though they may be germinating, they've all turned green/grey and slightly swollen. Hopefully since they were small oranges they will also be small trees or shrubs. (yes I know t'aint necessarily so, but can dream) 😏 Gonna need another greenhouse....

Recently there was a story about a university couple in Saskatoon who have been trying to breed a lemon to grow here that's less sensitive to low temperatures, supposedly they are to the point of trying to patent their creation. It still won't cope with any frost, apparently, so that hasn't worked but the thing seems to fruit abundantly, from the photo of a cluster of fruit. The interview was long on gosh and wow and short on details such as light requirements. I haven't heard of any varietal name but people apparently are lining up to buy one when they have any for sale.

[jocelyn]

Sedlings do bear fruit, it just takes longer. Seedlings have to go through their juvenile period before becoming old enough to fruit. All fruiting trees/bushes are derived from seeds....then the good ones get grafted to copy them. Grafts fruit sooner because the scion has come from a tree that has already completed its juvenile period. I have apples, pears and chestnuts, walnuts too, that are all seedlings and all bearing. This is the usual case, not the exception

[prairiegardens]

Yes I'm pretty sure that their experience was a result of too little light or some such. " the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the plant, but in ourselves, " so to speak, something too few people these days are willing to admit.

[jocelyn]

They might not know either, and be just guessing at why it didn't fruit.
I've done that lots of times, and then, oops, that wasn't it...........
Fun way to learn though.

[walt]

If a seedling is pruned to keep it short, it will never bloom.  The pruning will remove growth before it matures.
Trees in general, I won't say all trees, only become adults after so many leaf buds are between the seed and the growing point.  Prune off the end of a twig, and you have delayed the maturity that much.
The number of buds required is specific for a given seedling, and selection over generations does give a shorter juvenile period.  I read a paper years ago that Califormia peach breeders discard all seedlings that don't fruit in their third season from germination.
If you want to prune your tree seedlings but want them to produce, bgend the oldest growth back and thread graft or aproach graft to the trunk.
Thread graft is drilling a hole in the trunk and threading a twig through the hole.  Aproach grafting is slicing some bark off the trunk and slicing the bark off a twig (same size slices so they fit together) and binding them together.  Both of these types of grafts have the advantage of leaving the scion on the tree until the graft takes.  The scion can keep growing through the whole process.

[prairiegardens]

Goodness, the things you learn here! I'd never even heard of thread or approach grafting before, found a video about ithread grafting on you tube on a bonsai site. Astonishing. Who knew?! Now I am looking speculatively at the Meyer lemon, it's too small to do a thread graft but an approach graft would/could bring some branches back into the trunk? It's frustrating to see three long branches just getting longer and longer no matter what I do. So maybe will look into this a bit more. It's remarkable that I'd never heard of these before, I even belong to a group which does a LOT of grafting and are very involved with breeding fruit trees and scionwood.

Thank you for the information!

[walt]

Yes, I used to have several bonsai.  That's where I learned about thread grafting.  From the internet, same as you.  Two very well-known bonsai artists each said on one thread that they had grown apple seedlings for 20 years without them blooming.  Well, they had been cutting off twigs before they could mature.
I learned about tree maturity from articles on apple breeding.  Apple breeders can get seedlings to bloom within 2 years.  They grow the rapidly in greenhouses under constant optimum summer conditions.  Commercial apple tree sellers will list how many days of vernalisation a given variety requires to bloom.  And after first bloom, it seems those numbers are accurate.  Yet breeders routinely have them bloom the first time without any vernalisation.
Approach grafting is how named mango trees are propagated in Niger.  I was in charge, but my workers had to teach me how.  They had been doing it for many years.  Being in charge does not equal knowledge.

[jocelyn]

No, being in charge does not equal knowledge, grin. It's a lot of fun to learn new things though, great new toy to play with

[prairiegardens]

The orange seeds are being shy about sprouting. 4 of them have but they are all odd, malformed seed, so not sure what if anything they are going to do. Since they are supposedly from a satsuma orange which is described as being seedless, it will feel like a coup if any of them actually grow. Otoh my house is much cooler than most so that may be discouraging...I planted the 4 that clearly have tried to sprout and will see if any of them grow. The rest haven't moulded or anything and still look swollen and greenish but nothing else too definite yet, though 2 or 3 are beginning to split and have traces of bright green. So it's a bit of a question if they are reacting to light and will croak when planted, they are not behaving or looking the way seeds "normally" do. Time will tell.....

My lemons or lemonquats or whatever they are, are continuing to thrive other than one, not sure what happened to it but it had new growth starting to happen and then it just stopped and drooped all its leaves and the new growth turned brown. The rest are doing well, they've doubled in size, so hoping that one was a one of whatever. Wondering though, if the light intensity is adequate, these are under t-8s and some are beginning to stretch since I dropped them a little...they had reached the lights so got dropped 4 inches or so.

[steev]

Does sound like light intensity might be less than adequate; what you get for being so northern, unless you crank up the artificials.