Apple seeds and scions will be available this year starting Feb 7th. As usual, they are available early to Patrons. The webstore will be password protected for patrons until Thursday February 7th at midnight. Patrons, see member posts for the password if you didn’t get a notice by email already.
I don’t have a lot of scions, because my trees don’t always grow a lot since they are not pampered. It was also a pretty good apple year, so they put more resources into fruiting than into growing wood. They are also often on the small side, though I don’t send out anything I wouldn’t graft. In fact, if anything, I don’t send out a lot of wood that I would graft myself and usually keep the smallest scions for my projects. The good news is that my scions are cheaper than most places.
I do however have a lot of seeds. I actually have quite a few intentionally cross pollinated apple seeds this year. These are crosses that I think are promising for some reason. I can’t grow many more seedlings, so this is a way to get crosses that I think are promising out into the world. The usual caveats apply. Even with intentional crosses, you just don’t know what you are going to get. Some will be bad, some good and probably the great minority will be worthy of further propagation. I also use some fairly primitive genes in the red fleshed apples, which very likely reduces the overall success rate. The Open Pollinated seeds, those that have an unknown parent pollinated by bees, are even more of a gamble. They might be pollinated by any of 100 or more random varieties. Of course the high variability of apples is what makes them appealing to grow from seed as well, because with that randomness comes a lot of possibility.
The pollen is from last year, stored in a freezer. I can’t vouch for it’s potency or viability. I’ve kept pollen at room temperature for a year and used it successfully before, but not frozen. Freezing should keep it better, but it’s an experiment and I’ll be assessing the potency and viability of this frozen pollen myself this year. I may just collect pollen, freeze it and sell it the following year from now on, since it’s hard to get it all picked, dried and sent out in time for use the same spring.
International shipping: Scions I will send to the lower 48 United States and Alaska only. I will ship seeds and pollen internationally, but I won’t be responsible for the shipments not arriving if they are seized by customs, and I won’t lie on the customs forms about the contents. It is very expensive to ship seeds internationally, I remember recent seeds being about 13.00 U.S. Dollars to send. If you live outside the U.S. place your order in the webstore and check out, then I’ll figure out the postage and we’ll adjust the cost.
Here is the link to the webstore: http://skillcult.com/store/
