Selecting Pome Fruit Crops and Varieties - Growing Organic Orchard Fruits - page 151

gions of North America. With the tools available today, however, these pests
can be controlled in organic orchards throughout North America.
A NOTE ON PROPAGATION
When we plant a fruit tree, we generally want to know how tall the tree
will grow; its susceptibility to pests and diseases; the bloom and ripen-
ing dates; the size, color, and flavor of the fruits; and so on. Most of us
have our favorites — 'Bartlett' pear, 'Liberty' apple, or 'Madison' peach,
for example. We know what to expect when we grow or buy these par-
ticular varieties. This predictability is achieved with orchard fruits by
propagating our favorite plants vegetatively (exceptions sometimes in-
clude such crops as Nanking cherries, wild or semidomesticated bush
cherries and plums, and Damson plum). (See page 47 ➔ for more in-
formation on the various propagation techniques.)
Other than fruit breeders and some rootstock nurseries, orchardists
seldom grow fruit trees from seed. The reason is that every tree fruit
seed produces a genetically unique individual that may, or may not,
have desirable horticultural traits. Unlike certain vegetables, such as
tomatoes and beans, most fruit crops do not breed true to variety (one
exception is Damson plum).
Our most common domestic apple, Malus domestica, for instance, ap-
pears to be a complex hybrid involving several different species. A
cross between two apple varieties usually produces thousands of
widely differing offspring, few of which meet commercial standards.
Obtaining one named apple variety from 1,000 to 10,000 individual off-
spring from a given cross is usually par for the course or better.