Question
Ten years ago, I sowed the seeds of an apple and kept a seedling, which has since grown into a lovely tree. This year, it bloomed for the first time and was a sight to behold, with hundreds of white flowers. Unfortunately, the apples stopped growing from mid-summer onwards. They stayed very small and, what’s more, they have marks and spots and don’t look very pretty. What treatment should I give her to get beautiful apples?
Answer
Fruit size is largely genetic. When you sow apple seeds, the seedlings inherit not only that variety, but also the parent that contributed its pollen. What’s more, cross-breeding recombines the traits of both parents and can bring out hidden genes (recessive traits). A bit like our children, who generally have mixed traits from both parents and sometimes characteristics not seen for generations, your apple tree has a complex and unpredictable genetic baggage, and there’s very little you can do about it. Fruit size, in fact, is innate and depends little, if at all, on treatments such as fertilization.
It may be that the “father” of your apple tree is a crabapple tree, which is just a small-fruited apple tree, and that he has passed on the “small-fruited” trait to your apple tree. As for the fact that the apples aren’t “very pretty”, this can be caused by various diseases such as apple scab or insects like the apple maggot. Again, your apple tree may have inherited resistances or susceptibilities to diseases and insects. I’m afraid that in the game of dice that is apple multiplication by seed, you haven’t won the jackpot!
A Possible Solution
If the fruit really isn’t edible, rather than wasting 10 years of effort, here’s another possible solution: graft branches from a variety (or varieties) of apple tree with known characteristics onto your apple tree. The apples produced on the grafted branches will produce apples true to the type of the branch donor. I’ll leave it to you to find out how to do grafting in a book on the subject (there are indeed a dozen possible techniques). Since grafting takes place in spring, you’ll have plenty of time to learn about the technique.
Larry Hodgson published thousands of articles and 65 books over the course of his career, in both French and English. His son, Mathieu, has made it his mission to make his father’s writings accessible to the public. This text was originally published in Le Soleil newspaper on May 9, 2005.
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We inherited several elderly apple trees when we bought our property 10 years ago. Sadly, they’re between a copse of cedar trees and a tall hedge. Rarely do we get apples but one year was great. There is one lonesome pear tree that has produced fruit once. A neighbor’s old apple tree produces heavily every year. They do absolutely nothing to it.
Many years ago I was gifted a bucket of apple seedlings which I planted only to have one survive to be a tree. I waited at least 15 years for it to bloom and fruit. The fruit was small and nothing like the parent tree but it made good jelly.
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