fruit trees?

[old fashioned]

How does one get a fruit tree started? from seed? or cutting? or???
Has anyone tried this before?
Sure I know going to the nursery and pick up one already started is easier and more commonplace. BUT is it even possible to start your own?

 

[mandieg4]

It is my understanding that to get good fruit you usually have to use a graphed tree, but I may be wrong.

 

[patandchickens]

Yeap, if you want the tree to come true to variety you need to graft a piece of an existing proper-variety tree onto another tree or onto new rootstock. Cuttings generally do not work very well on fruit trees.

You can of course plant a seed and get "a" tree (well, if the seed was viable - many peaches, for example, do not contain viable seeds) but it will generally not produce fruit particularly similar to the one you got the seeds from.

All in all the simplest way to start out is to buy a few well-chosen trees Then if you want to practice grafting you can stick additional varieties' branches onto those trees, or experiment with grafting onto little rootstocks.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[old fashioned]

Thanks for the replies, but that would take trees to begin with. I'm talking about before they are trees.
Can you plant a seed and eventually get a tree? Or from a fallen branch?

 

[patandchickens]

You can graft a twig from another tree (or from a VERY newly-fallen branch of it, like fallen *today*) onto whatever appropriate tree or rootstock you may have available.

But you cannot readily root cuttings. With a lot of persistance and careful attention to detail, and doing like a hundred of them, you *might* get one or two to strike, but on the whole it does not work and is not really worth trying.

As said above, you can grow a seed from an apple or whatever and it will (with care and luck and about 3-8 years' time) grow into a fruiting-size tree of that species... but it will NOT be the variety that the seed came from. It will be some random, possibly nice but often fairly mediocre, "mutt".

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Ridgerunner]

As Pat said, you can start seeds, but the odds of getting something nice that way is fairly poor. Apples cross-pollinate with another variety and you rarely get a decent apple from that cross-pollination, even if both parents are good apples. If you can find a tree that bears an apple that you like, you can plant a sprout growing under that tree and it might produce the same apple. If it is a sprout coming off a root, you will be OK, but if it comes from a seed, you are back to pot luck with the odds against you.

Pat, can you cut a root under the apple tree, leave the cut end exposed, and get a sprout? I have a situation I'd like to get a clone but I don't trust my grafting skills. I'll try bud grafting this summer but my normal optomistic attitude leaves me when I consider grafting for the first time.

 

[old fashioned]

Thanks again and I apologize for having not understood Pat's first post about the seeds.

Ridgerunner-with so many fruit trees having been grafted to other rootstock, how would the sprout give the same fruit?

I ask because I have a few trees that have many root sprouts that I've considered digging up and trying for more trees, but with so many grafted trees on the market it's more possible that I wouldn't get the kind of apple or other fruit the tree bears.
One case in point here is my pear tree-it has a root sprout that has grown more than the actual tree and is producing quince. Which is apparently what pear is usually grafted onto.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ridgerunner-with so many fruit trees having been grafted to other rootstock, how would the sprout give the same fruit?

Excellent question. This is an old family tree that has been propogated a few times by planting sprouts. I don't know where the original tree came from, I'd assume a volunteer tree. We had a few volunteers in our pasture field and those apples were truly horrible. Dad took a sprout from the tree on his father's farm, then planted another sprout from that tree when his original one got old. That's the tree that is still alive at Mom's. My brother successfully planted a sprout from Mom's last tree. Dad also got several trees with small, knotted, twisted apples from sprouts he took from under that tree. Those would have been from the seeds.

The apple would never go commercial. It is too ugly for consumers. It is a huge blotchy apple, not real attractive because of the blotches, that matures very late. It will eventually turn slightly yellow and ripen enough to eat, but stays quite sour until it ripens. It is great for making apple butter and cooking in general.

 

[patandchickens]

Ridgerunner, I've never heard of root cuttings or induced sprouting from roots working on an apple tree, but if it is a big and healthy enough try, you could always try it in one spot just in case.

Grafting is for sure your better option though. If this is a good-sized healthy tree it should be able to provide an ample quantity of twigs/buds to graft, so I would suggest grafting your butt off, so to speak, perhaps in different ways (educational if nothing else!), and that way even if you only get a 5-10% success rate you will get some success. "Vote early and often"

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks, Pat. I intend to try. My brother tried bud grafting last year and it looks like he got maybe one out of 8 to 10 to work. A buck deer took a ring of bark off a couple of my young apple trees preparing for the rut, so I expect to have a couple of established rootstocks perfect for practicing grafting, bud grafting this summer and slot grafting or whatever you call the other type next winter.

I don't have a lot of extra space for another apple tree, this one does make a very large tree, and at my age I really don't want to wait 7 or 10 years only to discover "Oops, didn't work". That's why I want to be pretty darn sure of any sprout I take.

Thanks again, Pat and Old fashioned, sorry for the hijack.