Often times you hear you cannot grow an apple tree from seed. This is said for two reasons; one, it takes a much longer time to grow a tree from seed than from grafing and two, an apple tree does not grow true to seed. When you purchase an apple at a store, that apple was grown through a cross pollination of two parent trees. If you were to plant the seeds from that apple, they wouldn’t produce the same fruit. Instead, they would grow as one of the two parent plants.
We recently had a friend bring us apples from a very old apple orchard in Maine and they were the most delicious apples we had ever tasted. So we decided to save the seeds and see what we end up getting.
The first thing you need to do (after picking and eating your apple of course!) is dry your seeds. We put them in a small glass mason jar so we could easily shake them around once in a while. It is also suggested to lay them out on a piece of wax paper, turning the seeds every day or so. The drying process should take around three to four weeks. The seeds will start to lose their glossy shine when they are fully dry.
The seeds then need to undergo a stratification period, or a period of cool temperatures. After the seeds are dry, we will cover them with a light layer of soil and put them in the refrigerator for three months. After that time period, we will give them some moisture and put them out on the window sill to see how many will germinate. Check back around March to see how we did!