https://modernfarmer.com/2021/04/why-citizen-scientists-are-working-to-cultivate-new-apple-varieties/
Here is a short article in Modern Farmer about people that are growing apples from seed. It has a nod to me, and a couple quotes. I was not actually interviewed, but the author pulled a few lines from some messages we passed back and forth. I’ll take it.
I’m happy to see this idea gaining momentum, and I think this is just the beginning. Once people start getting results and see the potential, they’ll be hooked like me, and even more people will start doing it. My contention for some time now has been that the explosion in American apple diversity stemmed from a chaos of interbreeding and seed planting, and that the best way to regain that diversity, but with a general trend toward improvement, is a more focused chaos. Meaning…
plant a lot of seeds
and a wide genetic variety of seed
but not just any seed, seed from a focused genetic pool, or pools…
This dovetails with a concept I’ve been fomenting for a few years, and which is starting to gel into a communicable and I think potentially viral idea- Community seedbank trees and populations. More on that in the future. Read the article here: https://modernfarmer.com/2021/04/why-citizen-scientists-are-working-to-cultivate-new-apple-varieties/
I’ve begun collecting pollen from/for the 2021 bloom. Once I get most of the pollen collected, I’ll list if for sale. It may or may not be too late to pollinate this year, but it can be saved over until next spring too. I hope to have more pollen than ever from my own crosses this year, and already have one packet from the early new seedling Twang, as pictured. It just depends on how many bloom, how much they bloom and how much I can stay on top of collecting regularly enough to catch it.
