Growing fruit trees - Organic vs Un-treated

[Marcher]

Absolutely. Of the few that nature determined to be strong enough to survive, only a small proportion will have fruit of the highest quality.
So 99% of seedlings may not be tough enough to survive, and 99% of the survivors may not have fruit of any outstanding qualities.

Alternatively, you could skip the natural selection process and hope for the one-in-a-hundred chance of a great new variety. You'll just have to "make do" with whatever weaknesses it has.

Or do what I do: plant hundreds of seedlings each year, and let the pests and diseases whittle them down to just a few.
The few survivors then get a chance to fruit if they survive long enough.
If the fruit is not good they will be disposed of, or perhaps considered as a rootstock.

If the survivors produce good fruit, I'll have produced probably the closest thing to the perfect variety.

Have you found any good ones yet? I wish someone would find a Citrange with good flavour. It's a hybrid between an orange and a Trifoliate orange, the Trifoliate being extremely hardy and orange-like, but having terrible fruit. Sadly the offspring are only good for marmalade, so I think we need a similar process to yours above.
I have thought about growing one just to fool people into thinking I can grow oranges outdoors all year. They'd want to taste the fruit though. I'm not sure why they're not more widely grown though, people grow crab apples all the time just to look at them. What's more beautiful than a tree laden with pseudo-oranges?

[Marcher]

A bit like "plants for places" - such as fuschias.
They're a little too winter-cold-sensitive, a little too drought sensitive and a little too alkaline sensitive to thrive in this area. But I've seen lots of them in their native SouthWest.

But of the varieties I grow and find to be mostly trouble-free, Beauty of Bath is OK down your way, as is Jupiter, as is Ashmead's Kernel. So some varieties can tolerate a wide range of soils and climates.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person in this country that doesn't like Fuschias. If the SW was just a tiny bit milder in winter then the non-barren hydrangeas would probably naturalise there as they do in the Azores. I'd love that.

[boundtothesoil]

I might still have a few seedlings growing in the grass, or under their mother tree.

How few pips seem to germinate and reach seedling stage from the large number of windfalls under many apple trees is surprising to me. I'm now on my fourth year of dabbling with planned crosses between varieties and I achieve around 80% germination of the pips I plant in pots. Now that I know what a very young apple seedling looks like, with its two cotyledonary first leaves (rather like a radish), I've started to look for naturally germinated ones under my trees, and haven't found any. Maybe my eye isn't trained in sufficiently, or they get eaten (by slugs?) as soon as they emerge, or mown off with the grass. But they don't seem to be very successful, compared with acorns, for example. On the other hand, I've read that, traditionally, cider apple varieties and rootstocks used to be selected from the many seedlings that grew on sites where the waste from pressings had been dumped. And when it comes to discarded cores (Marcher's post #99), how many cores have to be randomly discarded for each seedling that emerges - I bet it's at least 100, if not 1000!

[FB.]

Have you found any good ones yet?

I had a few promising ones at the start of 2012, but although they had proven to be very disease resistant, tolerant of neglect, tolerant of drought and tolerant of prolonged flooding (I deliberately tried to drown them for days on end in their first year), they were below average vigour (probably about M26 equivalent) and as a result they got eaten by persistent slug attacks, then the cool, sunless summer finished them off because the slugs continued to eat them faster than they could grow new leaves.
The same happened to my rootstock "stoolbeds". It was so cool and sunless that the plague of slugs ate the shoots faster than the shoots could grow (given lack of warmth and lack of sun). So all my rootstock stoolbeds died too.

[yummersetter]

I've watch our family orchard for decades and have never seen any apple pip germinate despite thousands of fruits falling to the ground every year, Same with pears and plums. When I process the fruits all the cores and stones get tipped onto the compost heap and taken up to the vegetable patch 100 ft from the trees and they never sprout either. I think the existing trees exude germination suppressant and it spreads for quite a distance.
However the A303 is lined with fruit trees that I'm convinced have grown from my 25 years worth of cores and fruit stones hurled out of the passenger seat window.

[FB.]

How few pips seem to germinate and reach seedling stage from the large number of windfalls under many apple trees is surprising to me. I'm now on my fourth year of dabbling with planned crosses between varieties and I achieve around 80% germination of the pips I plant in pots. Now that I know what a very young apple seedling looks like, with its two cotyledonary first leaves (rather like a radish), I've started to look for naturally germinated ones under my trees, and haven't found any. Maybe my eye isn't trained in sufficiently, or they get eaten (by slugs?) as soon as they emerge, or mown off with the grass. But they don't seem to be very successful, compared with acorns, for example. On the other hand, I've read that, traditionally, cider apple varieties and rootstocks used to be selected from the many seedlings that grew on sites where the waste from pressings had been dumped. And when it comes to discarded cores (Marcher's post #99), how many cores have to be randomly discarded for each seedling that emerges - I bet it's at least 100, if not 1000!

Domestic apple seedling survival does appear to be very low, even though germination rates are high.
I'd agree with "about 80% germination" as you say. It might even be closer to 90%, but in any case, it's a high level of viability.
Unlike some "vegetable" seeds which we might sow on the veg plot, apple pips don't seem to remain viable for years on end - or at least I haven't managed to store pips for a year and then get them to germinate.

Some cultivars - mostly the triploids - tend to produce seeds which are less viable. Many seeds from triploids are small, flattened, misshapen and produce freakish seedlings which never seem to get going. Very occasionally a triploid fruit contains an outstanding seed which is very large, very vigorous and very healthy.
I have sometimes noticed occasional seedlings with three leaves. I wonder if these might be triploids or other genetic curiosities.

But with people tending to nurture a seedling because they don't want it to die, that's probably why we find many varieties to be less rugged than we'd like; nature would have disposed of them if someone hadn't cared for them.

However, ruggedness of a seedling will partially be due to its rooting habit. But if grown on a M or MM rootstock, the effectiveness of the seedling's roots is not an issue.

Antonovka is considered to produce rugged seedlings, in part because of its natural disease resistance, but also because of the very large taproot which its seedlings generally produce. A good set of roots is priceless; even if your top gets chewed off or lopped off, your roots may be a big enough reserve of nutrients and vigorous enough to find even more, to be able to re-grow a new top.

Not too far from me, are a couple of ancient Bramley trees. The trunks went hollow decades ago, and have mostly broken off a few inches above ground.
Now the derelict old trees have become several separate and smaller trees, growing in a circle, still producing Bramley apples from the little bit of trunk at the base (above the graft).
Now that is the kind of ruggedness that I like to see; a variety that can completely regenerate and rejuvenate itself from a hollow, split and rotten shell of an ancient tree.

[FB.]

I think the existing trees exude germination suppressant and it spreads for quite a distance.

Maybe soil nutrient depletion, soil-borne fungi, nematodes and sheer competition in the mother tree's root zone make short work of a seedling's roots.
Not dissimilar to "replant disease".

Although, for example, certain rootstocks may be considered to be resistant to replant, would they be sufficiently replant-resistant if planted at the smallest possible size equivalent to a seedling? (normally we plant a tree that's a couple of years old or more - even a maiden has a two-year-old or three-year-old root system).
Seedlings should also have partial replant resistance (being a new genetic mix-up) but I doubt that nematodes or slugs are as cultivar-specific as fungi tend to be.

So perhaps high quantities of small pips, inside a fruit which takes time to eat, is an encouragement for someone to pick an apple, munch it for several minutes while mooching along a hedgerow, then tossing the core away into a non-replant piece of soil.
Alternatively, some or all of the pips get eaten with the apple, and they end up coming out the rear end of what ate the apple, and deposited potentially miles from where the apple was picked, with a nice dollop of rich fertiliser around those seeds to help them on their way.

[Marcher]

How few pips seem to germinate and reach seedling stage from the large number of windfalls under many apple trees is surprising to me. I'm now on my fourth year of dabbling with planned crosses between varieties and I achieve around 80% germination of the pips I plant in pots. Now that I know what a very young apple seedling looks like, with its two cotyledonary first leaves (rather like a radish), I've started to look for naturally germinated ones under my trees, and haven't found any. Maybe my eye isn't trained in sufficiently, or they get eaten (by slugs?) as soon as they emerge, or mown off with the grass. But they don't seem to be very successful, compared with acorns, for example. On the other hand, I've read that, traditionally, cider apple varieties and rootstocks used to be selected from the many seedlings that grew on sites where the waste from pressings had been dumped. And when it comes to discarded cores (Marcher's post #99), how many cores have to be randomly discarded for each seedling that emerges - I bet it's at least 100, if not 1000!

I think the whole point of fruit is that an animal eats the fruit, seeds and all and then poops it out with some fertiliser some distance away. There is a tree species on Mauritius (I forget the name) which hadn't grown new ones for hundreds of years. Eventually they realised that it had to pass through the gut of a dodo first. They found a bird with a similar gut - turkeys - and for the first time in hundreds of years, new trees of that species grew.
So yeah - I'd say the organic fertiliser and stratification in the gut is probably the key.

[orangepippin]

Or do what I do: plant hundreds of seedlings each year, and let the pests and diseases whittle them down to just a few.
The few survivors then get a chance to fruit if they survive long enough.
If the fruit is not good they will be disposed of, or perhaps considered as a rootstock.

If the survivors produce good fruit, I'll have produced probably the closest thing to the perfect variety.

This is pretty much how most new varieties are now raised in university research programmes. Plant thousands of seedlings of desirable crosses, deliberately expose them to disease, then work with the survivors, and expose them again, then do field trials in different areas / soils / climates etc. It can be done on a small scale too - Hugh Ermen produced Scrumptious, Herefordshire Russet and many others in his back garden.

[orangepippin]

Consumers tend to buy what they know, or varieties they've tasted and enjoyed but cant easily find in the shop.
Consumers have a tendency to choose varieties which are difficult to grow - the varieties being difficult because they are so widely grown or because they are commercial varieties not necessarily bred with backyard growers in mind.

The most popular plum in the UK is, apparently, Victoria - and it's also one of the most disease-prone.

Victoria is not only the most widely-planted plum tree, it is also the most widely-planted of any fruit tree in the UK. This of course means its growth characteristics and problems are well understood in almost every soil and climate. Victoria is however a special case, it has become the "Hoover" of plum trees. It is unfashionable amongst enthusiasts but it does have some good qualities - it is a very good cooking plum (probably one of the best) and a pretty good eater when ripe. It's also easy to grow and a very heavy cropper. These qualities go some way to balancing out its poor disease-resistance.

Notwithstanding the above, I disagree with your suggestion that consumers tend to choose varieties that are difficult to grow. In my experience people often approach fruit-tree growing with a degree of trepidation and their top requirements are "easy to grow" and "nice flavour", followed by "I want to get fruit next year".

[boundtothesoil]

Maybe soil nutrient depletion, soil-borne fungi, nematodes and sheer competition in the mother tree's root zone make short work of a seedling's roots.
Not dissimilar to "replant disease".
.

Given the above, plus Yummersetter's "I think the existing trees exude germination suppressant and it spreads for quite a distance." and Marcher's apple core observation, it might be worth testing out in a very crude way by doing a simple germination test, comparing pots of soil taken from beneath a large apple tree and a 'similar' soil from 100 m away. I imagine that this has been looked into by the horticultural scientists in the past, but not necessarily.
Although I can see that the dispersal mechanism for apple in the wild is designed to pass through a herbivore's gut, with the seed being subject to physical/chemical changes etc, then deposited some distance away from the mother tree with a dollop of fertiliser, to my mind this still doesn't fully explain why germination and/or seedling establishment success rates appear to be quite so site specific.

Whilst several weeks of low temperature treatment (stratification) of seeds is often stated to be a requirement for germination of apple seeds, hence could be an additional factor in detemining germination success between different sites, this does not seem to be a strict requirement: see quote from 'The Grafter's Handbook', by R.J.Garner of East Malling Research Station (p.49, 1967 ed)
" An alternative treatment is to stratify the seed immediately after extraction (from the fruit), whilst still wet, and sow it in the open in early spring. Still another method, suitable for small batches, is to extract the seed when the fruit is ripe in autumn, drop it into a vessel of water and swill occasionally over a period of two days, and then sow directly in pots or boxes, which are placed under glass. Given warmth,germination takes place in two or three weeks, but otherwise is delayed till spring."

I tried the last method two years ago, but had to wait until the spring before the seeds germinated.

[boundtothesoil]

...at this rate we'll need a new variety of apple, plum and pear ever 10 years if we want to keep ahead of disease. .

So, what with FB's instructions to plant a mosaic of varieties and rootstocks in alternating rows etc, it would seem that the budding new grower striving to set up an 'untreated' organic orchard is going to have to 'change' varieties every 10 years or so if he/she is going to have a chance of sustaining it as 'untreated' in the long term. And then there's the issue of 'replant' disease alluded to. I suppose one could repeatedly top-graft the trees, or move to a different part of the country, but it sounds like it's a pretty difficult ask!

[Marcher]

So, what with FB's instructions to plant a mosaic of varieties and rootstocks in alternating rows etc, it would seem that the budding new grower striving to set up an 'untreated' organic orchard is going to have to 'change' varieties every 10 years or so if he/she is going to have a chance of sustaining it as 'untreated' in the long term. And then there's the issue of 'replant' disease alluded to. I suppose one could repeatedly top-graft the trees, or move to a different part of the country, but it sounds like it's a pretty difficult ask!

A mosaic of varieties would limit disease as FB said. A new variety every ten years if we continue planting monocultures of one variety because after a few years each variety is ruined by disease. The only way of getting around this is by spraying, and that can only limit damage, not act as a cure in the long term. So whilst people like eating their one variety of apples we will continue to see monocultures and varieties becoming useless to organic growers due to disease and pests.

[FB.]

If you're growing less common varieties, the disease resistance may remain intact for the life of the orchard.
Court Pendu Plat is thought to date back to Roman times, but its all-round disease resistance is still good.
Even the "common" varieties haven't lost all of their disease resistance. Bramley was and still is widely grown but still has good resistance to mildew but has lost scab resistance.
Lane's Prince Albert was once widely grown but still has good scab resistance and some canker resistance but lost its mildew resistance.
Worcester Pearmain has lost some of its scab and canker resistance, but still has mildew resistance.

So I suggest plant less-common varieties and take action to replace or prune out diseased bits of trees only if you suffer a resistance breakdown (which will only happen occasionally and only affect one variety, and may be tolerable if its not scab).

I'd make an educated guess that disease resistance would be "lost" something along the following lines:

Varieties classed as "very resistant" have a 0.1% chance of losing one level of resistance each year.
Varieties classed as "partially resistant" have a 1% chance of losing one level of resistance each year.
Varieties classed as "intermediate" have a 10% chance of losing one level of resistance each year.
Varieties classed as "slightly susceptible" have a 20% chance of losing one level of resistance each year.


So let's start with Rosemary Russet.
It has "partial" resistance to scab, mildew and canker.

In year one, it has:
1% chance of scab resistance dropping from "partial" to "intermediate"
1% chance of canker resistance dropping from "partial" to "intermediate"
1% chance of mildew resistance dropping from "partial" to "intermediate"

So during its entire 100-year maximum likely lifespan, it’ll probably only lose one level of resistance to each disease – from “partial resistance” to “intermediate”.
In areas of high disease pressure (high rainfall in the case of scab and canker) it might lose two levels of resistance – from “partial resistance” to “slightly susceptible”.
In areas of low disease pressure (low rainfall in the case of scab) the tree may not lose any resistance to scab over its entire lifetime.

But if we plant fifty Rosemary Russet trees in one long line, each year there are fifty chances for the diseases to attack and find ways past the resistance. Just one tree losing its resistance would allow build-up of a new fungal strain on that tree which might attack all the others next year if conditions are favourable, thus bringing the resistance level of them all down by one level, once they are all infected.

[orangepippin]

So, what with FB's instructions to plant a mosaic of varieties and rootstocks in alternating rows etc, it would seem that the budding new grower striving to set up an 'untreated' organic orchard is going to have to 'change' varieties every 10 years or so if he/she is going to have a chance of sustaining it as 'untreated' in the long term. And then there's the issue of 'replant' disease alluded to. I suppose one could repeatedly top-graft the trees, or move to a different part of the country, but it sounds like it's a pretty difficult ask!

I think this is far too pessimistic - although it helps to be an optimist if you want to plant an orchard of course. If you keep the orchard well maintained, and set realistic expectations of what you can achieve in your own circumstances, there is no reason you should not be successful in growing a wide range of varieties in an un-treated regime over the long-term.