Amateur Apple Breeding: A Look at Some Parent Apples That I use

[@saltychad1820]

You've inspired me to plant seedlings in a hedgerow. I've thought the same thing about the so-called experts saying that seedlings can't produce edible apples, but you've pushed me to try it out for myself. I would like to get BITE ME once I get my rootstock established in a few years.

[@SkillCult]

Cool. If you can choose at least the seed parent from the best apples you can. Crossing is easy too though if you have access to numerous varieties in the spring. Just keep your expectations low, it's always a roll of the dice. I like the hedgerow idea. Look forward to hearing any results in the future. I'm grafting the seedlings for this project today. They're already sprouting out.

[@SkillCult]

cavalerneinfricat I doubt I can offer much when it come to peach breeding. I have thought about it myself. Here the issue is leaf curl. I've been trying to collect leaf curl resistant varieties with the possibility of breeding or at least just planting seeds and selecting. I have a hard time with grafting them. It's hard to get fresh wood, and even with fresh wood, they are very fickle and dry out easily. My friend David Good at Survival Gardening said he met a retired peach breeder who told him that in all his years of work he never really bred any peaches that he felt great about because they only bred for commercial traits like disease resistance, storage and looks. That's why we need people like you! Go for it!

[@cavalerneinfricat]

+SkillCult I will start making videos,in this area I have a local variety called "peaches that grow in vineyards", this trees are early producers and very prolific, peaches are greenish-white when are ripe and very aromatic and sweet ,but the leaf curl kills them in a few years.Hopefully I will fix it.

[@SkillCult]

+cavalerneinfricat I'm sure there will be more leaf curl resistant varieties coming out to work with. Frost was the standard for a while, but it was just good, not great. Angelus peach has been very good, but I'm still assessing the leaf curl resistance. Muir is extremely resistant, but so far has not been a great peach. For nectarines, striblings white is looking pretty good, not totally resistant like muir peach, but outgrows the curl pretty well and the fruit is excellent.

[@cavalerneinfricat]

+SkillCult I never heard of these varieties ,I live in Romania and I was looking for three years for resistance to leaf curl , that purple variety is all that I found, but you will see all in the video that I will make this days.

[@cavalerneinfricat]

+cavalerneinfricat sorry that I get a little tangled,to clarify the situation,I have two kinds of peaches , one that makes good peaches but are susceptible to leaf curl an die, and one that makes bad tasting peaches but the trees are very healthy.I want to crossbred them and see what will happen.

[@SkillCult]

+cavalerneinfricat I see. I'll look forward to seeing your video.

[@stephenluna7932]

Looking forward to doing this when I have my tree established

[@77grundy]

Have just come across your channel and watched a couple of apple videos. I like what I've seen so far. I too am a bit apple mad, particularly for (hard) cider apples. Since moving to Saskatchewan Canada from U.K. 5 yrs ago I have been trying to find apples good enough for cider but am struggling and the thought of about trying to breed some has occasionally crossed my mind. I look forward to exploring all of your videos.

[@SkillCult]

Every once in a while I communicate with someone in Canada or Alaska with very cold climate. There are quite a few crabs that will grow up there. You guys need a northern fruit growers forum or something to share info and scions.

[@neilsmall6518]

i like what you're doing. I live in Barbados and i have started to grow some apple trees from seed. Just to see what would happen. Some people told me just to give up on it. You have inspire me to keep at it

[@SkillCult]

Cool man, keep it up. I have one apple from the tropics called dorset golden. It is super weird here and tries to grow in the late winter. I think it was grown from a northern apple seed. I've wondered if it's seeds didn't adapt genetically to the environment as it grew or something. I would plant a crap ton of very different seeds. Have a look at Kevin Hauser's sites Apples and Oranges and Kuffle Creeks. He is all about apples in the tropics. Trying to grow some that he suggests and then either crossing those or planting mass seeds might be a good approach to take. That is probably what I would do.

[@neilsmall6518]

Thanks a lot I will do that. I think planting a lot of seeds and crossing will work.

[@cavalerneinfricat]

Hi Steven,glad to see someone breeding fruits for flavor and i want to say that your work is very interesting,i am interested too in breeding fruits trees,I want to focus on peaches because in my area they don't grow very well, the oldest peach tree is about 10 years and is very susceptible to diseases, I find a variety that is very resistant but is barely edible because is quite bitter. I want to cross this types and see what will happen.My goal is to obtain good peaches on healthy and robust trees.I was thinking that we should speak together and share our experience, what do you say?

[@verdemocambique]

Found your comment 7 yrs later...I wonder if you had any progress...

[@verdemocambique]

In Mozambique we don't have any apple variety since it's in the tropics...And I never heard about a breeding program here...so I want to play with some crosses with varieties that Grow in hot zones like Anna and Eva varieties. Lets see what happens😁😁🔥

[@SkillCult]

Check out Kevin Hauser. He has a website called kuffle creek and a blog called apples and oranges. He specializes in no chill apples and growing in the tropics. You can add a lot more apples to that list to work with. Good luck, I applaud you for the effort. Great work that needs to be done :)

[@jacobluker5531]

I’m just wondering on where to get some of these apples. The majority of apples sold at my local store are mostly the regular old school types like Granny Smith and HoneyCrisp. I have a hard time finding anything different. So I was wondering where you originally found some of these apples

[@SkillCult]

I get them by trading scions (cuttings for grafting) with people and going to scion exchanges. If you want apples to eat, there are small orchards around the country that will have some diversity, but there are only so many and most still wouldn't have most of these I don't think. At this point, it's kind of grow your own, but hopefully that will change.

[@jacobluker5531]

SkillCult Oh ok, well I watched the entire apple breeding playlist and I’ve learned a lot. And I also found out that you sell pollen and seeds on your store website and was wondering when the seeds will be back in stock. Thanks for the help and information👍🏼

[@suburbanhomesteaderwy-az]

Do you know the zones that King David can grow in? I've tried to find the answer but without luck.

[@SkillCult]

I do not unfortunately. It is originally a southern apple. It does well in the heat here. You can look under tree register on this site www.orangepippin.com/apples/king-david That doesn't tell you how good it is there, but maybe you can tell by the reviews.

[@bethechangeme2233]

I'm curious why you do not just graft the saplings directly onto an established tree rather then onto their own dwarf rootstock. Would grafting them onto a mature tree not speed up the fruiting process? I'm not a breeder btw, just a curious noob question.

[@SkillCult]

I would need a lot of trees for that, which I would have to plant. I have I think probably 250 or more seedling trees now and you could only crowd them on to a mature tree so much. In my experience so far, they have not fruited more quickly so far, but I may be doing it wrong according to one commenter. I will probably try doing some of that on the next batch of seedlings. Oh, also I need clean stock to be sure that I don't have any virus infection in the main tree, because it would give it to all my seedlings. People do it though and it's an option.

[@bethechangeme2233]

@@SkillCult Ah yes I see now with that many tree's it would not be practical also the virus issue would become problematic. Its definitely an eye opener seeing your experience as its always been something I've wanted to do. I'm just getting started on building an orchard of the tastiest varieties but would like to experiment with some breeding programs as time goes on. Have you had any luck with breeding anything new and amazing or is it the case that the majority of results are so so with good results few and far between? Seems to be that way from what I understand so far but I might be wrong about that.

[@SkillCult]

@@bethechangeme2233 Virus is most likely a problem if you graft something old on the tree, not a seedling. Most trees don't have it, but most trees also show no symptoms, so you never know and if the tree gets infected, all the varieties on the tree are infected and it's a whole deal to get uninfected scions out of them, though it can be done. For me it's been mostly so so, some bad, some good or okay. Very few are inedible, I'd guess less than 10%. I have one open pollinated seedling that I would rate very good and two or three interesting to promising, all out of around 20 that have fruited. I am using some fairly primitive genes though, so I suspect that knocks my percentages down a bit. If you were crossing really outstanding desert apples together, it just seems like the chances would be considerably higher. I'll find out when my dessert crosses like that eventually start to bear.

[@gabeolson-jensen8676]

Have you thought of using haralson Zestar! or Honeycrisp in your breeding? Also if your looking for a late season Apple I would look into keepsake.

[@manjichromagnon5480]

Honeycrisp is gm?

[@vlad4video]

Steven, thank you for this information! Do you sell scion wood for these varieties? And if so when is a good time to contact you about it?

[@SkillCult]

+vlad4video I may be willing to do that this year if there is interest. You could also get them in trade on the North American Scion Exchange group online (just google it, it should be easy to find). Many of them are pretty common. Contact me through my website in late Dec of Jan if you need wood and I may be able to cut some wood for you.

[@vlad4video]

+SkillCult Thank you Steven!

[@georgegeorg7302]

Dear Skillcult, Nice work. I want your help. I want to make my apple breeding experiment. I want use a variety with scab resistant and an other with really good taste like cox's orange. From which variety should should i use the pollen? I mean should i use the polen from the cox's orange variety or from the scab resistance variety Thanks a lot. Continue your good work

[@SkillCult]

You need to do research on scab resistance. I don't actually know how that trait is passed, so I can't tell you which parent is best for scab resistance, pollen or seed, but the information is probably out there in scientific papers or books on breeding. There are a lot of Cox offspring that might be suitable. Here is a list. www.gardenfocused.co.uk/fruitarticles/apples/coxs-orange-pippin-descendants.php. search for lists of scab resistant apples. Here, gold rush is pretty well immune and more of the modern varieties are very resistant.

[@georgegeorg7302]

SkillCult Thank you for your help.

[@georgegeorg7302]

I decided to use Blue Pearmain as the disease resistance variety. It also has good post-harvest value. So which bariety should i use as the male parent and which for female parent? Cox's Orange×Blue Pearmain OR Blue Pearmain ×Cox's Orange Does it matters which variaty will be the male and which the female? Thanks for your help

[@walkingmonument]

Awesome video

[@TheLasTBreHoN]

You sound exactly like Gordon Ryan! What accent is that?

[@SkillCult]

Huh, I don't know about that lol. Born and raised in California. I grew up in a surf town. Lots of sufer influence. deewwwd.

[@WaterLilly91]

Просто обожаю! Это моя тема! ) Спасибо! )

[@thezestypumpkin3202]

How old are you???

[@SkillCult]

About 18,280 days

[@thezestypumpkin3202]

50

[@johnlord8337]

10*

[@bordom6476]

bro graft some on to others an use that lime to build a wall