I see this kind of question every so often on this board, and I should just have a standard reply on
file to answer it. Anybody who wastes their time with growing
apples from seed is either an experimental station planting hundreds of them with the
hope that something unusual emerges, or people like yourself who spend years nurturing this tree,
only to find out that the resulting apples taste like (you know what).
It's a genetic thing with the resultant tree not getting it's genes from the original tree,
but something from a previous generation of that tree, which mostly does not resemble it's parent.
Stone fruits have a better chance of reproducing from seed, but
even that is chancy. You have as much chance of getting a good apple as winning big in the lotto.
You can buy a small tree for as little as 15 to 20 dollars and you then know exactly what variety
you have. Most apple trees require another 'malus'
or apple family tree to pollinate for fruit, although some like Yellow Delicious are
self fertile. If you have a crab apple tree, that works. If your neighbors have any of
those trees, that also would probably work.

Sherwin D.

"K. Kly" wrote:

So one day my 4 yr old is eating an apple and asks my wife about seeds &
such. So they decide to do a little expirement and plant the seed. Low and
behold a seedling sprouts up and they cherish it and nuture it, etc, etc. 5
months later and the thing is only about 5 inches tall, but has a bunch of
leaves on it. They've got it in a little container(we live in Ohio).

Thing is, they both think they are going to plant it outside next spring and
my wife seems to think that in a few years we'll have an apple tree. And of
course she is telling my son this. Meanwhile, I'm skeptical of the whole
thing. First of all, we don't know what kind of apple it was, we don't know
if it'll survive in Ohio and we certainly don't know if it will bear fruit.
Doesn't their have to be some cross pollination or something for a tree to
bare fruit?

What's the fture of this 5inch apple tree?