Grow apple plants at home from fruit

“An apple a day keeps doctor away”- the English proverb shows the importance of apple fruit in human life. Apple (Malus domestica) is a deciduous fruit tree bearing reddish and sweet drupe fruits. Apple plants are normally grafted to control the size of tree but they can also be grown from seeds at home which can be done as follows:

• Apple grows best in well draining soil, medium moisture, where temperature in the range of 0C to 25C. But with appropriate conditions people are growing though out the world.
• Apple can survive below zero temperatures, just do a research before buying one.
• First of all, get a well matured freshly picked apple fruit (for best result), If in case, you don’t have it just get hold of any ordinary apples from grocery stores.  

• Collect the seeds by cutting the fruit taking a good care not to cut the seeds. In general an apple has 8-10 seeds in each of them.   
• Always start the project when the temperature in surrounding starts to rise. That mean if its end of winter, its the best time.
• Collect maximum number of seeds as far as possible because its for sure all of the seeds are not going to germinate and all of the young plants will not make it to adult. (Always have a concept of reserve) 

• The seeds of apple need to break their dormancy to germinate which can be done by stratification. For this, keep the seeds inside a covered plate or box and put it inside refrigerator at 4⁰C for about one month.  

• After that, take a napkin paper and wet it with water and place the seeds on one half and fold the other half to cover the seeds.  
• Now keep the napkin inside a plastic bag  or zip lock bag and place it in cool and dry place. It can be placed your kitchen rack or window also. The plastic bag helps to presurve moisture. 
• Replace the tissue paper once in every 4-5days for better result 

• After 3 days my seed germinated which is really fast. Check if your seeds also grew or not, if not germinated place them back in bag and wait for a week. If not grown again hold another week. Now if at this moment also they don’t show any sign of germination then try with new set of fresh seeds.  
• If germinated place them inside coco peat or pearlite and peat moss mixture or 50% garden soil and 50% compost or if you don’t have any of them just give a try with ordinary garden soil the result may vary.  
• You can use disposable drink cups with growing medium of 4-6 inches just to start up the growing process  

• Put the seed in the cup and cover it up with the growing medium and again put it inside the plastic bag or zip lock bag so that the seed will not get dried out and it can grow faster. 
• At the 30th day, the seedlings will have grown enough to be transferred to individual cups. 

• Transferring the seedlings to individual cups is necessary to get the faster growth and hardening of the seedling before planting them to the soil.
• Now take out all the seedlings from the cups or plates and separate them carefully to get all their roots without breaking.

• Then plant them in separate cups filled with coco peat, water them and place them in well sun shining area or you can put at your sunny window also. Now they are ready to grow. 
• Wait till get around 5inches and them transplant them in bigger pot if you want to make apple bonsai or in garden to make a big tree.  
• If you have any queries about coco peat please click this link https://youtu.be/x-atX9M6B8o

• It takes roughly 3-5 years to start fruiting if provided with favourable climatic conditions.
• Bonsai of apple plant can be made but we need to be careful regarding pruning timing, healthy growth timing, nutrition timing etc.
• Its not for sure by 1try you will get the plants one has to try 2-3 time to get a plant if the first attempt has failed.

Good luck for my growers.

Interesting facts on apple:

1. Apple is the fruit with highest number of varieties(more than 8000 varieties).
2. China is the country with highest production of apple.
3. Apple fruit is popularly known as forbidden fruit.
4. Apple floats in water because it is 25% air.
5. Sekai Ichi is the most expensive variety of apple.
6. New York city of US is nicknamed as “the big apple”.

Image courtesy: Pixabay.com