Found a very nice chance seedling apple on our farm. Ripens a few at a time, so it's largely for home use. It has been ripening irregularly for about two weeks and has a while before it is finished. Stays green until shortly before it's ripe, then quickly develops red stripes. As soon as the stripes show, it's ripe. Since it stays green in color so long it doesn't attract apple maggots (so far). Good scab resistance, too. It resembles Liberty, but bigger and more tender.
it's a good example of the fun you can have growing fruit from seed.
" title="Laughing" />The fun of growing from seed, you say.
I like that thought.....and I agree you have something of interest.
Most readers of this forum probably know, but just in case there is one lurker out there who doesn't........the original "Johnny Appleseed" aka Chapman ONLY dealt with seedling apples....that is what he believed in using as he did not like genetically cloning trees with what he saw as un-natural grafts......that is what Chapman used for helping to colonize future homesteads and taming the wilderness with agriculture....also, the seedling apples are (apparently) actually what contains the best acids and tannins for the kind of cider most pioneers dealt with.....so one man's "trash" is another man's "treasure"....they may not have tasted good off the tree but that is not what they were used for back in Appleseed's day.
But, if you can actually get a good seedling with an interesting taste right off the tree and you have an interesting color pattern as well, then that is great and so much the better (IMO and all).
Ted Swensen brought a seedling apple to the HOS annual meeting last year. It was spectacularly delicious: High flavored, sweet and acid, with lots of character, like one of the greatest heirloom apples (of which it is probably a seedling). He brought it to the scion exchange, and I grafted it. It is now growing in my garden. He found it in his grandmother's yard in Monmouth, so it is called Grandma Robison seedling. I highly recommend it.
John S
PDX OR
and some seedling trees are bug-resistant. I found one old tree that didn't seem to have an apple maggot problem. (one of my hobbies is to investigate trees and their bug infestations as I bike around)
The City of Bothell was scheduled to tear the tree down and I tried to "bud-graft" it.... (without Bothell City's permission as no one wants to give official permission, but that's another story)......anyway, I didn't succeed as a grafter.
Too bad. Dr. Robert Norton, of the Western Washington Fruit Research Foundation (retired), looked at the apple and told me it was this kind of apple that we needed to look at more seriously.
Too late. The tree is dead, gone, and destroyed now to make way for the improved highway that went through it.
Civilization has progressed. It probably wasn't the silver bullet I was looking for anyway.
[quote="DonRicks":27d3ar5k]It probably wasn't the silver bullet I was looking for anyway.[/quote:27d3ar5k]
It's always the silver bullet if its the one that got away! 
Several times over the years (maybe 5 or 6 so far) I have taken wood from wild trees, only to discover that the tree has been bulldozed, died, or otherwise annhilated.
Glad I got the copies I did. Now if I can keep the bulls eye rot from claiming my babies!
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
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