One of my favorite folk heroes is John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed. We have all heard the tales of him walking barefoot across America planting apple seeds everywhere he went. Well, the truth is, he planted apple seeds in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Illinois — just ahead of the settlements moving west in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
John Chapman wasn’t the wandering dreamer he is made out to be in legend. Research reveals that he was a careful, organized businessman who bought and sold tracts of land and developed thousands of productive apple tree orchards over a 50-year period. Chapman was born in Leominster, Mass., in 1774 and headed west to Ohio in 1792 with his father and half brother. Leaving them behind, John began his solo trek in his early 20s.
Chapman’s dream was to produce so many apples that no one would ever go hungry. He carried a leather bag filled with apple seeds he collected for free from cider mills. Legend has him planting along roadways and by the streams, but research suggests that he created numerous nurseries, selecting the perfect planting spot, fencing it with fallen trees, bushes and vines, sowing seeds, and returning at regular intervals to repair fence and tend the ground. He sold the trees or traded them to meet his simple needs, just to make sure people wouldn’t go hungry.
The return trips Chapman would make to tend the trees enabled him to bring news to the settlers. His favorite book was the Bible and he often preached a message to the settlers as well. John accumulated more cash than he needed and didn’t care for banks, so he relied instead on an elaborate system of burying his money. Chapman would rather give the trees away than have a family go without and be hungry.
Johnny Appleseed, as he had come to be known, made his last trip back to Ohio in 1842 to live with his half brother. He died March 18, 1845, of pneumonia at the age of 71 while visiting a friend in Indiana, and is buried in an unmarked grave near Fort Wayne.
Thanks in part to Chapman, there is still a lot of interest today in planting apple tree seeds. I get calls each fall wanting to know how to germinate the seeds and how long it would be before there would be a crop. I am sure that Johnny Appleseed didn’t know what we know today about growing apples from seed.
Let me begin with a statement: “Apples are not true to seed.” This means that the seeds from that extremely delicious fruit you just ate won’t produce a tree with that same apple.
Here is why: It takes two different varieties of apple to create fruit. The fruit produced will be whatever that tree is, but the seed will be a cross of two varieties and will produce a completely different tree and apple. There are more than 80,000 varieties of apple, including crabapples, and you won’t know which tree pollinated your tree. Therefore, the seeds in any given apple have the potential of being 1 of 80,000 other varieties.
So the question of the day is, “How do I get the same apple tree my grandfather has in his yard?” Grafting, or vegetative reproduction, is the only way to generate the exact same tree. This means taking a small piece of bark with a bud and cambium tissues from the good tree and grafting it onto the root system of an existing tree. The developing tree will produce the exact same fruit, even though it will have been pollinated by another variety of apple.
It takes two apple trees of different varieties for pollination, and the highest quality fruit is harvested by this cross-pollination process. Make sure the varieties chosen have overlapping bloom times. Bees are the primary pollinator, so be careful not to spray insecticides during bloom when honey bees will be present. Buy healthy 1-year-old trees 4 to 6 feet tall with good root systems. A small tree will transplant better than a large tree. Fruit trees require much pruning and training in their first year, so refer to Kansas State Research and Extension publication C631, Pruning Fruit Trees, for information.
There actually are a few varieties that are self-pollinating and will produce true seed, but not very many. If you wish to grow apple trees, check with your local nurseries. They can help you select the varieties that grow well here and the secondary variety as well. These trees already will be grafted and ready to plant.