Wild Apple Trees from Seed

[BoneCrusher20]

Anyone have experience with wild apple trees and disease resistance traits? I have few i bought 5-7 years ago and most are starting to put on at least some apples per year even though wasn't expecting much for another 5 years or so. I only bought them at the time as got like 15/$100, so i took gamble.

Curious if i'm going to start running into diseases with them? I would think tree grown from seed would be less susceptible to like FB, since the trees get physically larger and more spread out where with most dwarfs/semi's these days they are so prone to disease, because they leaves are much closer. Really not sure what i'm going to run into with these wild ones if anyone has experience.

Right now they've been a well interesting tree experience compared to my grafted counterparts. They sure like to sucker and no pun intended but grow wild and i cannot keep up on thinning them.

 

[Native Hunter]

Apple diseases will start showing up while trees are young, except for fireblight (FB). It will usually not be seen until trees start to flower. Another strange thing about FB is that it only shows up in years when the conditions are right for it. You can go several years and not see it and then suddenly have it to appear. Apples and Pears can range from very resistant to very susceptible to FB. This includes apple trees grown from seed. Seed grown trees will have a chance of having better disease resistance if their parents had good disease resistance. However, there are no guarantees, because genetics passed on from one tree to another is the same as with humans. I've know some fine parents who had children who turned out to be sorry liberals.

The other 3 major apple diseases (scab, juniper rusts, and powdery mildew) can also be more or less severe due to weather, but you will generally see them to some extent every year. If you haven't had a problem with these 3 yet, I doubt that you will have a problem in the future.

You are very astute to reason out that full sized trees are able to handle diseases better than dwarfs and semi dwarfs. Not many people understand that, and the industry doesn't want you to know that. If you haven't already read the thread shown below, you might get a lot out of it. I would be more bold with my comments in the thread, but I'm really bashful. Good luck with your trees.

http://deerhunterforum.com/index.php?threads/the-forbidden-apple-tree-knowledge-thread.2478/