How to Grow an Apple Tree from SEED to FRUIT in 3 YEARS

today me and tuck are going to show you how to grow an apple tree from seed and taste some fresh apples from tree we planted over 10 years ago let's go when first started gardening used to save the seeds from almost every fruit that ate in hopes to one day plant them and grow some of my own fruit trees from seed especially wanted to grow my own apple tree from seed because wanted to have my own variety of Apple that no one else in the world could have in March 2013 began mixing apple seeds into my plantings back in those days would take all different kinds of seeds including apple seeds put them in bowl mix them all together then go out and sow them all at the same time in an area want to mention that in order for apple seeds to sprout they generally have to go through cold period of stratification in order to break dormancy had this happen naturally because planted out my apple seeds in like early March they had that cold weather and then couple months later it got warmer and they sprouted if you want to start your app apple seeds indoors or in pot what suggest you do is take your apple seeds wrap them in damp paper towel and then put them in plastic bag don't like to close the bag like to leave the bag just little open so no mold forms or anything then put that in your refrigerator for like 6 to 8 weeks after that take them out and then sow them the same way you would plant any other seed did this for some apple seeds that grew in pots then took those apple trees that grew in pots and then transplanted them into the garden but the best and easiest way to do is what talked about earlier put some apple seeds in the ground in like late winter early spring and they'll go through that whole stratification process naturally another great thing about planting apple seeds directly into the ground is that they'll have the ability to grow really strong long tap route that never has to go through the transplant process by fall of that year in October 2013 number of the apple trees that started from seed showed considerable growth and were looking strong and healthy out of the five or so that sprouted two of them were standouts they looked beautiful they were really healthy and was really impressed with how much growth they had in such short amount of time also had young apple tree growing that transplanted out in Spring this one looked pretty good but it didn't look as healthy and vigorous as the ones that direct sowed after only 3 years in May 2016 one of the apple trees that planted from seed showed massive amount of growth and to my surprise had apples growing on it was so excited to see this and was really hopeful looking towards later in the year where would be able to have my first taste of my own apple variety in October 2016 the apples were ripe and was able to taste my first ever Apple from seed grown my own variety it took only three years from seed to harvest when tried my first Apple had to make sure that was rocking my Polyface farms sweatshirt just to represent Joel Salatin one of my heroes it's October 2023 over 10 years since first planted this apple tree from seed and over 7 years since got the first harvest look at the size of this thing and gave it its own official name the Prigioni Apple come in here and let's taste how the apples actually are I've had them before cuz I've been growing this tree for long time in the past but look at the beauty of this and check out who came to say what's up praying mantis so these apples are ready look at the color beautiful we're going to get taste of it right now there's nothing like tasting some of your own apples your own variety that you planted from seed so long ago it's great to just watch it grow into such large tree let's taste it nice pop to it so delicious not as stringent little kind of maybe spritey in the beginning but so sweet at the end an incredible flavor and as you can see an incredible tree love it so much so you'll notice these apples are bit smaller than regular apples that's because when it comes to Growing apples they don't grow true to seed for instance if you take honey crisp apple you save the seeds from that and you plant that seed in the ground you're not going to get honey crisp apple back the reason for that is because there's so much genetic diversity when it comes to Growing apples you'll get seemingly almost random traits from both parents that get go into the Apple so all different kind of traits ranging from like shape size color flavor disease resistance it's like almost random and think that's one of the funnest Parts about growing your own apples from seed when growing an apple tree from seed you're more likely to get variety that isn't as good as domesticated ones so fortunately for me got variety that really enjoy and just love having my own kind of tree me and tuck are the only ones who have this actual variety another thing is you'll notice that this tree is massive so when you plant an apple tree from seed they grow into full size trees and they're almost impossible to keep really small and still get consistent fruit on them so typically when you buy an apple tree like domesticated one that's grafted onto root stock let me bring you over to liberty Apple so if if you want to grow like apple tree from seed you're going to need lot of space because they get full-sized but if you have smaller amount of space and you want to grow an apple that you're guaranteed to get good one then you can get something like this this is the Liberty apple and this is grafted onto root stock so this tree is will only get as tall as semi- dwarf tree because that's the size of the root stock so this tree will only get about 8 to 12 feet in height when it's fully actually full size and you can see how beautiful the apples are we know we're going to get this consistent good apple the Liberty right here this is known as one of the most disease resistant apple trees in the planet shine it up little bit and you got some beautiful Apple let me just take bite real quick so juicy so ripe and so delicious if you have even less space you could even get variety that's grafted onto dwarf fruit stock so this is my honeycrisp apple it's always loaded with fruit but it's grafted onto dwarf fruit stock so this will only get about 6 to 10 ft in height so if you have limited space don't suggest you plant an apple tree from seed unless you then want to graft that apple tree from seed onto dwarf fruit stock so when you grow domesticated varieties that are grafted like this you're allowed to you're able to grow good consistent fruit in small amount of space one thing did which allowed me to get an apple tree which produced fast again after only 3 years was planted so many seeds for instance if wanted one or two apple trees planted like 30 or 40 seeds and then about five or six or seven of those germinated and then allowed the strongest ones to grow so it's almost like how nature does it if nature wants to grow like if nature puts down carrot seeds to grow carrots it doesn't just drop one seed it drops hundreds of seeds and the strongest ones grow so kind of Follow That same method taking little lesson from nature in order to grow an apple tree like this had few other apple trees like four or five think it was that got relatively large and got rid of those because after about 5 years or so they were in producing and had already had this apple which was getting large and can't fit more than one full-size Apple Tree in my yard another thing is look how loaded the apple tree is there's so much fruit on it there are lot of different things could do with this fruit for instance can make pies can make cider can make jelly can even make vinegar or something so it's got lot of different uses another beneficial thing about this apple tree is that it helps to pollinate all my other apple trees since it's so large it produces so many flowers so it works fantastic as pollinator for my honey crisp apple over there and my Liberty Apple too so there's lot of benefits that come from it all in all I'm so happy that have my own variety of Apple growing mean it doesn't taste as good as eating something fresh like Williams Pride Apple some of the domesticated varieties so usually just process lot of the apples all in all though there's nothing like eating an apple getting the seed out planting in the ground you know watching it grow and then seeing it turn into huge apple tree and the excitement of finding out what the fruit's going to look like then finally getting to taste the fruit hang out in the shade of the tree you've grown it's it's an absolute treat and think it's every think it's something everyone should try in their lifetime it's such blast to be able to have your own variety of Apple the Prigioni Apple so good that's today's video Growers thanks for watching we hope you enjoyed it we hope you got something out of it me and Tu hope that we encouraged you and educated you little bit about growing apple trees from seed again you never know what you're going to get and that's like one of the greatest Parts about it so if you don't have lot of space then don't necessarily suggest that you plant an apple tree from seed if only had very small amount of space I'd probably just get domesticated dwarf apple but even if you really want to grow an apple tree from seed you can do that and then once it starts fruiting you could just graft one of the branches onto fruit stock and kind of keep that variety for me wanted the tree to get so large because take like little bit of Pride and have planted this from seed it's just like when come out here see the apples on it it's just like don't know there's something enjoy about it there's something unique about like eating fruit saving the seed from it and then just being part of the whole process and then watching it actually fruit itself it's just so much fun and it it's like being part of the whole cycle of nature it's it's super rewarding so me and Tu wanted to mention that we just dropped some merch well recently at Jamesprigioni.com our new merch to sow with the flow merch and this guy hasn't been in the video lot but believe me he's been in the back background working digging through stuff grabbing Peppers so he's always having blast out here and we hope you guys love seeing talk in the video spam some hearts down below if you love seeing the little homie in the video we also wanted to mention thank you to one of our new channel members Trina saldivar thanks for being part of Team grow thanks for having your hand in everything we're doing out here we also wanted to mention to share this video with your friends if you got some value out of it and if you enjoyed it and this is something that I'm just been passionate about because it's just always it was always something wanted to do and having actually done it I'm really happy that did so again I'll encourage you guys to get some apple trees planted from seed you never know what you're going to get it's like an apple Lottery and that's truly one of the greatest Parts about the whole thing we had blast we hope you guys did too tuck and James will be back at you again real soon we out!