Lady Apples

                                                                        

TheGardenLady received this question from John:

I live in the Texas hill country, and have started some lady apples from seed. I am not sure how well they will grow, but how can I give them the best chance, and what are their growing habits.

                                                                         

The Pink Lady apple is from Western Australia and likes weather in the US that is South of the Mason Dixon Line- zones 6 through 9. It grows 9-11 feet in all types of soil. It doesn’t need another tree to pollinate – it is a self pollinator. It needs full sun and takes 3 to 5 years to bear fruit.

If you read TheGardenLady’s column on raising apples from seeds, you will understand that you probably won’t get good apples from the little trees that are growing for you.

In order for the farmer to get the good tasty apples that is wanted the nurseryman or woman takes cuttings from healthy trees of the fruit variety the farmer wants and grafts these cuttings onto the roots of other apple trees (rootstocks) which are really good at growing – for example, they resist temperature extremes, pests and diseases. This insures that the fruit grown on the new trees will be of the same variety as those from which the cuttings were taken.

You may think that if Johnny Appleseed could grow apples from the seeds he carried and planted across the US, you  should be able to do it, too. And you, Johnny White, did get the seeds to grow. But what kind of apples do you want your trees to bear?  Do you want to get the apples like the one you ate which gave you the seeds you planted? Then you may be disappointed. If you read the real story of Johnny Appleseed, he wasn’t planting apples that he wanted to eat fresh. He was planting apples across the country to enable the settlers to make hard cider. To make cider, you can use any apple. The reason apple growers graft the apple trees today is that they want want to be sure what they grow has the apples on it they want.

Here is a website answering the question “Can I grow my own apple tree from seed?”

Since you are from Texas, a good website on apples is this one.