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Fruit & Orchards

Growing plants from seeds of store bought fruits

7 years ago

I've been growing a couple different fruit trees, all germinated from the seeds of store bought fruits.Is there any way to determine whether they are going to bear fruits when they mature? I recently heard that usually fruits sold at stores are grafted and plants germinated from their seeds don't grow up to bear fruits (I should have known this...). I have plants of three kinds of fruits:

A. Persimmon... 1 year old (for this I added a photo)
B. Lemon...3 months old
C. Kinkan (Kumquat)... 3 months old

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Comments (4)

trianglejohn
7 years ago
I do this also. Besides the fact that seedlings rarely taste or perform the same as their parent tree did there's the fact that a lot of them (citrus in particular) can take forever to mature to the point of bearing fruit. I still grow from seed but I see how easy it is to keep the plant alive and if I ever like the way it looks - then I order a grafted one of superior quality from a nursery.
Ken Shinoda thanked trianglejohn
parker25mv
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
Usually, fruit trees are not grown from seed for the following reasons:

1. The tree resulting from the seed will not be the exact same cultivar as its parents, and the fruit will often be inferior. Whenever plants are propagated through sexual reproduction, it's the luck of the draw as far as what genes the offspring gets. That's why fruit trees are almost always asexually propagated from cuttings.

2. It takes a long time to grow a tree from a tiny seed

3. Most fruit trees are grafted onto different rootstock (of a different cultivar or very similar species). This allows the tree to began producing fruit much early in its life. It may start producing at 3 years instead of 10 years like it would growing in the wild. By stunting the tree's growth a little bit, more of the energy will be diverted towards fruit production.

That being said, growing fruit from seed can be fun if you have the patience to wait 10 years. You could end up with a new variety.

It's cheap and easy to grow from seed, but you will likely put a lot of time investment into the tree only to find out that the fruits don't taste as good.

One more problem is that most of the fruit varieties sold at the supermarket may not be the best tasting varieties; rather they are the varieties that last longer during shipping and don't bruise. So flavor is sacrificed. If you plant a fruit tree yourself, it may not be the best idea to plant the same name variety you see in the supermarket. Do some research.

All these reasons are why it is usually better to buy a fruit tree than grow from seed.
Ken Shinoda thanked parker25mv
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pip313
7 years ago
Grafting doesn't make fruit trees fruit faster per se. The grafted budwood has to be mature for that to happen. But a very, very dwarf rootstock can make a mature bud fruit quick.

If that makes sense.

rooted cutting perform exactly the same as grafting onto a standard size rootstock in as far as how soon it fruits.

but this is general, citrus, apples, cherries, peaches, whatever, will act slightly different and have their own exceptions.
Ken Shinoda thanked pip313
Ken Shinoda
Original Author
7 years ago
Thank you so much guys, very through. Huh, how come I started growing them without knowing all these?

So if I want to be practical, I should probably replace them with those from reputable stores. To be honest, I've been growing them casually and somewhat experimentally, and it's fairly low-cost (both money and work) to grow them this way, but if the result is not promising it wouldn't be worth the effort. Also once they will get bigger and taller, it will take a lot more work, so for now I'll do my research to work out some long term plan.

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