How Long Is It From Seed to Harvest for Apples?

Grafting

• Nearly all apples are grafted to keep the cultivars true-to-type, since apples reproduce hybrid seeds rather than clones of their parents. Planting from seed with the intention to harvest from that seed creates a completely unpredictable tree. To have a sense of predictability, grow a rootstock from seed with the intention to graft a desired cultivar onto it. This surgical process should take place when the rootstock seedling is several feet tall and around a year old. Grafting involves attaching a scion, or small branch, from the cultivar you want onto the rootstock using one of several techniques and then allowing the injury to heal. The average tree is approximately one to three years old when purchased from a store, which accounts for all of this grafting time. Many growers even consider the year you plant the grafted tree from pot into the ground to be its birthday, rather than the day the rootstock seed was planted.

Cultivars

• The exact cultivar or parentage of the scion will create wide variations in the time it takes to produce fruit. Varieties such as "Northern Spy" and "Wolf River" are known for their extremely long maturity cycle, taking up to 15 years before fruit will be edible. Other varieties, such as the popular "Macintosh" and "Gravenstein," take approximately three to five years. Among the quickest are "Granny Smith" and "Braeburn," which can produce their first fruit crops in as little as one year after planting a purchased tree in the ground.

Rootstock

• Various rootstocks grow at different speeds, affecting a tree's growth rate by as much as two to seven years. In general, a dwarf rootstock will be able to produce fruit quicker than a standard sized tree. Most rootstocks are identified by numbers and letters signifying where they were cultivated, rather than by a name. M27 is a popular dwarf rootstock that can encourage the newly grafted tree to produce fruit within a single growing season. Larger rootstock trees, such as MM111, produce large trees, but can add up to an additional seven years to the wait time for fruit. Pairing a large growing rootstock with a slow-growing cultivar could mean decades of waiting for your first apple. When growing a rootstock from seed, you won't have the luxury of knowing how large or small your mature tree will be.

Shorten the Wait

• For those who can't wait patiently for nature to take its course, you can help it along. Tying branches in a downward fashion is a common way to trick an apple tree into believing it is ready to produce fruit. Use a soft twine attached to the end of the branch to pull it gently downward, then tie it to the trunk. This simulates the weight of a crop on the branches and sends a signal to the tree that it is already producing, making the tree likely to continue the process. Sacrificing shape for fruit is another option. While most apple trees spend their first few years being pruned into an ideal shape, this pruning puts the tree's energy into healing and branch growth rather than apple production. By skipping the pruning sessions, a tree will produce fruit faster.