Growing Apple Trees in My Basement!

By Canadian Renegade

So, I may have gotten a little carried away. It was early January and I had that itch to grow something. I also just happened to have some apple seeds sitting in my closet. I had purchased them last year but, due to everything that happened in our life, I didn't get around to stratifying them in time to plant in the spring.

When I purchased the seeds I had chosen five varieties. They were Dolgo, Ranetka, Borowinka, Antonovka, and Bittenfelder. I won't get into too much detail why I chose these varieties right now but, I will say, they will all hopefully be good root stocks for the extremely cold climate I live in.

One week old apple tree

I wasn't sure how long the stratifying process would take; the seed packages said either 45 days or 60 days. I also wasn't sure what the germination rate would be because the seeds had sat in the closet for a year. In the end I decided to do just over half the seeds I had. This would still give me plenty of seeds for next year if something went wrong.

Left: Seeds in moist paper towel / Right: Seeds currently in my fridge

Stratifying apple seeds is the process of keeping the apple seeds cold and moist for several months to trick them into thinking that they went through a winter. If you don't do this step and just put the seeds in soil, the germination rate will be little to none. Refrigerators just so happen to be about the right temperature, making it a common location for hobbyists to stratify. I have also read you can just put them in the ground where you want them to grow but this is pretty hard to do around here in January because the ground is frozen.

I had researched a few different mediums for stratifying the seeds but settled on the moist paper towel and baggy method. While not ideal, it was best for my situation. Other methods involve putting the seeds in moist sand or other material like peat. Unfortunately for me we don't have lots of extra refrigerator space and it would be much harder to check all of the seeds if they were hidden in sand or peat. I also needed to keep them well marked and separated so I would know which seeds were which.

Left: Rack set up / Right: 5 watt fan

I think the first seeds started germinating in the fridge after about a month and this continued for about two months after that, making the germination period anywhere from 30-90 days. Some of the seeds became moldy and rotten which could have been from either the paper towel being too moist or because the seeds were already damaged and cracked. Regardless, make sure your stratifying medium is moist but not sopping wet and check on your seeds weekly so you can catch mold issues early.

Once sprouted, I put the seeds into solo cups with holes in the bottom and placed them under grow lights. These grow lights that I have go by various names on Amazon and are similar to 4' shop lights but with a different spectrum. I usually shy away from Amazon purchases but it is very difficult to find good grow lights locally at a reasonable price.

I also added a small desk top fan which I just taped to the side of the racking. I had previous issues with fungal problems on plants I have grown in my basement. The air is cool and I think it also gets a little stagnant which makes the plants more susceptible to fungus. The fan I have is not ideal, a more wide spread air flow would be better, but this one uses only 5 watts so it was a good choice since this whole system has to run off of our houses solar battery bank.

I put the lights on a timer so I wouldn't have to remember to turn them on and off every day. With the low winter sunlight this far north, I only had the grow lights on about 8 hours a day to start and have been increasing it as our natural sun light and energy production increased. This method may not be optimal but it seems to be working ok at present.

Not bad for a couple of months under grow lights!

Since the trees are different ages there is quite a difference in size at this point. So far, I would say that this "experiment" has been a success. I currently have 43 apple trees and most of them look healthy! I am sure there will be some losses over the summer and I am also expecting some of them to die the first winter because of the cold. I have read that because of genetic diversity in seeds versus cloned rootstocks that there is quite a bit of variability in cold hardiness.

Hopefully, I will ultimately end up with two or three of each variety that are hardy so that I will be able to make my own clones for future projects. I also have some more plant propagation projects in the works so stay tuned everyone!

Apples, Willows and Sea Buckthorn under grow lights

Have a great day and an apple!