Kay Lancaster wrote:

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:38:12 -0600, sherwindu wrote:
Why put all this effort into an apple tree that will produce lousy tasting
apples. I mean, isn't growing

You're sure about that? cv Delicious was a chance seedling (and they're
very nice apples when they haven't been subjected to storage!) Likewise,
most of the heirloom apples are chance seedlings, and I'll take a Cox's
Orange Pippin or an Arkansas Black over a Fuji any day.

Naturally, only the successful chance seedlings were passed down through the
years.
The thousands, or perhaps millions of them that were just awful are not
around anymore.
Statistically, the successful chance seedling is a rarity. I personally
would not put a lot
of time and care into an apple tree with those kinds of odds.



Kids enjoy having their own plants... or at least I sure did. Kay's
Pear, while it never produced world-class commercial fruits, produced
acceptable home fruit, and it was *mine*.

There are a few things I have grown that I'm glad no one knows about.
Exactly how did you grow this Kay pear? Was it a sport of some well
known pear, a seedling of some known pear, or a complete chance seedling?

And I've gotten some
very good no-name apples out of local roadsides, probably planted by birds.

Or, they came from a known variety tree that lost it's identity somewhere
along
it's lifetime. Speaking of modern genetically produced apples, have you
tasted
some of the newer ones like Cameo, Honeycrisp, Rubinette, etc., etc. If you
look
in the Fruit, Nut, and Berry Inventory book of available varieties, you will
find
the chance seedlings there, but only a small percentage of the total
offerings. I
say, leave it up to the experts to do the experimenting, when there are so
many
good apples of known parentage out there. Encouraging a kid to put his
energies
into a losing venture is not a good introduction to gardening.

Sherwin D.



Sometimes, especially when you're a kid, it's nice to go against the
flow of uniformity and find out what happens in an uncontrolled
experiment.

Kay