Grow your own apple trees

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COMICS FOR VEGGIE KIDS

One day we caught the bus into the city and on the way, in the middle of nowhere, the bus stopped to pick someone up.  Right next to the bus stop, on the wide grass verge, was a large apple tree.  It was full of apples.  An apple tree, in the middle of nowhere, by a bus stop, apparently not belonging to anyone.  Free apples for anyone who chose to help themselves.

“How brilliant!” we thought.  We should all plant fruit and nut trees at every opportunity, and provide free food for foragers.  Food that will keep being produced year after year without any help from us.

So, we looked up how to grow an apple tree from seed (turns out there’s seed drying, seed damp-wrapping and seed cooling to be done, plus some weeks of waiting) and began 🙂

apple seedling

This was taken in January of our first seedling

And this is what it looks like now

And this is what it looks like now

So far we have 3 little apple trees going strong, all different varieties as advised on wikihow

So far we have 3 little apple trees going strong, all different varieties as advised on wikihow

It’s very exciting to watch them grow 😀

According to wikihow these trees, grown from seed, will be big (so we’ll have to carefully consider where we plant them) and it will probably be 10 years before they produce any fruit – but so what? We’re planting for the future, and that’s very cool!  It doesn’t cost us anything and it’s a very positive thing to do.  Why don’t you have a go?  Here’s how

Fancy growing other types of tree from seeds you’ve collected?  No problem – just look at this brilliant web page

UPDATES:

Look here to see how our little apple trees are doing 14 months later 🙂

And look at them now – after 2 and a quarter years 😀

And the year after that! (2017)

And in 2019!

32 thoughts on “Grow your own apple trees”

  3. I have always wanted to do this but haven’t quite managed. So many people have told me it will take ten years to produce fruit as if that is a deterrent, but I think if we all keep this defeatist attitude we will all starve!

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    • Absolutely! It’s a selfish attitude: “If I won’t be around to pick the fruit I’m not going to bother!” But in truth, it’s nice to plant something. Maybe it will get big and then you’ll have provided something wonderful for everybody. Miranda has got quite a few little trees in pots now – not big enough to plant out yet, and some of them look like they might not make it, but a couple are getting really strong. It’s an activity full of hope and possibilities 😀

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  4. Yay, apple trees! Yeah, it’s nice to watch plants grow. I hope they thrive! They’re so delicate in their infancy though. Some flower plants I tried growing ended up getting attacked by mealy bugs. Ugh! But now I got red/yellow pepper plants; their leaves are super green and healthy but since I’m paranoid, I have to keep checking ’em with a magnifying glass.

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  7. We are very lucky as we have quite a number of ‘wild’ apple trees close by to us, along with oodles of blackberries, raspberries, rowan berries, elderberries, bilberries, not to mention other wild ‘goodies’ all waiting for us in their own seasons. The apples are too bitter to eat raw unfortunately but they are great cooked. That’s a great idea to plant more fruit trees for future foraging. If they’re planted in places that aren’t mown or strimmed by councils/landowners, and the trees are given a little tlc for a while when they’re first planted out (giving their roots chance to establish without too much competition from neighbouring plant species) they should have a good start. Great idea though – let’s do it 🙂

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  12. Very nice! They look beautiful! What a way to plan ahead. I would love to do this with avocados, but the latitude where I live won’t support them during the winter months. 😦

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  13. Great stuff. You’d enjoy it here in North Cyprus – at the back of our apartment block is a citrus fruit orchard with the trees full of lemons, oranges and mandarins. Olive groves are all over the place as are grapevines. And we can pick pomegranates from trees beside our parking area and in our communal garden. Oh, almost forgot, figs are around for the asking too.

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  14. I love this. I read an article that a park in Seattle is actually growing fruit trees, shrubs and other veggies for any one who would like. Imagine if instead of just trees ( don’t get me wrong I love all trees) but imagine if everywhere we looked out in public spaces there were fruit trees and shrubs food for anyone who would like it for free. Imagine what kind of world that would be? I think it would be awesome……

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