With the list of disease resistant cultivars available to growers being comparatively short within respect to apples expected to be grown with the aid of conventional pesticide programs, and with repeat customers often asking to try new flavours beyond the 23 varieties we currently have fruiting, alongside my genuine curiosity about the potential of specific apple combinations, the importance of our homegrown fruit breeding program has come further into focus. After realizing how reliant modern fruit production is on chemical spray and fertilizer programs to prop up production of rows upon rows of clones, the overall lack of varieties available at the grocery store, and also small scale farms, compared to how easy it is to grow new varieties, and the mounting scientific and anecdotal evidence that trees grown from seed directly in the ground, on their own roots, in local soil, will often grow better than grafted counterparts, I realized that we had a perfect opportunity to prove the case that regular growers can grow better fruit by relying on selective breeding techniques that are as natural as the birds and bees.

 

The myth that it takes 10 000 apples to great a new variety only applies to industrial production, and big corporations only care about the bottom line, thus transportability, and shelf life being main factors of value, well above flavour and thus nutrition. I’ve had a few people come into the barn during the sales season and tell me they’ve grown delicious apples from seed in their own backyards and one couple told me their grand daughter planted a single seed, that now produces apples which prefer over anything at the grocery store. As much as I’m excited to create unique varieties and the potential they might hold, I also really want to encourage other growers and people to grow their own from seed and find the intrinsic value in such a pursuit, by showing how easy it is to grow good fruit from seed. I feel like the potential for farms to each have their own named novelty varieties is very high, even if they just dedicated a neglected area or difficult edge space to sow some seeds. Indeed, many of our recognized cultivars have been found in similar situations.

 

Also, growers like Steven Edholm aka Skillcult, and Karim from Keepers Nursery have been great sources of information and inspiration while researching for the NFDI’s apple breeding project. They have excellent content available on YouTube and instagram. https://www.youtube.com/@SkillCult https://www.youtube.com/@keepersnurserykarim

 

With hundreds of pawpaw, persimmon, about one hundred apples, a couple dozen crabapples, and a handful of pears planted in the ground and a bunch of hand pollinated as well as select open pollinated fruit stratifying in the cooler (some of the early season apple seeds from this season have started germinating already!) the FFFF NFDI is off to a good start.

 

Some of the specific goals of the project so far;

 

Gorgette - A Gingergold x Rosette cross that I’m hoping will be an excellent early season red fleshed apple with the disease resistance and compact growth characteristics of the Rosette, and the delicious dense crispness of the Gingergold. There are 10 of these crosses currently growing in the ground that started from seed. 

 

Triple Red /Satan’s Little Helper(working title) = A Double Red Delicious x Rosette cross that I’m hoping will improve upon the classic Red Delicious, which grows really well here, with some of the Rosette’s disease resistance and excellent flavour. There are a dozen of this cross that have been planted.

 

Gempire = A Gingergold x Empire - hoping for another amazing early apple, thought the flavours of these two could make some interesting combinations..!

 

Rusty Prince = Golden Russet x Pink Princess - Trying to cross a bunch of russets/redflesh over time, the flavours are going to be incredible!

 

Crisprincess - Mutsu/Crispin x Pink Princess - Mutsu being one of my all time favs, with some pink flesh and pink lemonade flavour, sounds somehow even more amazing! Also, could be great for baking, sweet 

Cider.

 

Spyro - Northern Spy x Rosette cross that I think could be an exceptional cooking/cider/eating apple potentially with red flesh and better disease resistance than the classic Northern Spy, which is one of my favourites!

 

OP PP (working title) - Open Pollinated Pink Pearl : someone gave me a couple of these apples and they were so delicious I grew out the seeds.

 

Gabper - Open Pollinated Gabourie Pear : seed sourced from a delicious pear from my family’s old backyard seedling pear tree (likely Bartlett/Bosc parents) that I ate off the tree in January 2024, and it was crisp and delicious! 

 

Pawpaw seedlings started from various seed sources including NOTL, Grimsby, St Catharines, Chippewa, Ottawa, New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, even handful from France, have been planted, next to the stream, and ditches, and at the forest edges of the property.  Hoping to find the best tasting and hardiest trees to hybridize and grow some astounding and astonishingly resilient fruit. There are well over 200 seedlings planted, we’ll see how many survive the winter..

 

Persimmon and hybrids from local and farther away sources have been planted in various sized groups and spacings, hoping to get some new fruits to grow in the allotted places while being mindful of the %20 chance of fruiting trees growing from seed, the rest being male and only growing leaves/wood. There are over a dozen sets planted so far. Collected and ate some great fruit this year, looking forward to sowing seeds and planting more seedlings this coming spring 2025

 

Pomegranate cuttings took root and have been planted in choice spots across the property, winter protection has been applied to some as the testing of the viability of this fruit growing in our orchards continues. They certainly propagate very easily! Long term I intend to cross the best varieties to create a Pelham Pomegranate

 

Jujube that I started from seed have been planted, perhaps a bit too early, they’re quite slow growing and I’m not sure how well they’ll handle the winter, despite giving them some protection. I kept one in a pot and put it in the green house and I’m still hoping some of the seeds from last season will germinate this year.

 

2025 Crosses:

 

Ida Redder (working title) - Ida Red x Red Devil 

 

Fuji x Rubiyait = Ruji? Fubi? Rufji? Rubuji? Potential to be an exceptional late season apple

 

Empire x Rubiyait 

 

Cortland x Hidden Rose 

 

Honeycrisp x Rosette 

 

Jonagold x Pixirosso

 

Royal Gala x Hidden Rose 

 

With the hand pollinated crosses being less successful this season I got into some open pollinated fruit as I feel our fruit genetics are behind where they should be and that most of the mixed genetic progeny from cloned parent trees will still be of (at least slightly) better quality than their parents.

 

Open pollinated Hidden Rose ; had a few of these apples grow for the first time this year - they were great!

 

O. P. Pixirosso - what an incredibly flavourful little apple! One of the trees we put in last year on B118 rootstock produced a handful of fruit and a bunch of flowers which I used for pollen.

 

Open pollinated Dolgo Crabapple seeds from our orchard because crabapples are amazing!

 

Open pollinated Russet, from a few trees on our orchard as well as couple Haist Family fruits! Russets are one of my all time favourite apples!

 

Open pollinated roadside pear seed from some very sweet Bosc type seedling tree I found down a local road..sweet flavour, tough skin…I liked it

 

Open pollinated plums.. our Early Golden (probably pollinated by Shiro), Victory, Italian, and German plums (probably pollinated by each other) all grew great this year.

 

 

Long Term Breeding Goals:

 

The Goblin, Gremlin, and Gargoyle apple series ; hoping to cross a knobbed and other russets with the best and reddest red flesh and create the gnarliest looking but most astonishingly flavoured apples. This whole series will be intentionally rough looking, irresistibly delicious, and super tough. 

 

Ghost ; An early season yellow transparent, or pristine x rosette/ pink pearl perhaps, inspired by the Mario ghost’s pink tongue..

 

Ghoul :  A green skin(maybe a Mutsu or Granny Smith) x red or pink flesh apple

 

Zombie : a super dark skin russeted redflesh 

 

Working with disease resistant apples and making modern (hopefully red fleshed) versions of the classic apples in hopes of increasing nutrient density and improving ease of production.

 

Pears- At this point, fireblight is a nightmare that never ends in our orchards and I will be growing out the seeds of all the disease resistant varieties we’ve planted that do well here. Also hoping to get some red fleshed types to experiment with.

 

Apricots - With some of the best supposedly disease resistant varieties now growing on the property I’m hoping we can selectively cross breed the top performing in our orchards for our own Pelhapricot or perhaps the FFFFapricot lol.

 

Figs - With the very first FFFF figs ever grown this year from a Celeste Improved cutting I rooted last year it seems likely more will be produced in the coming years, and breeding at the amateur level does seem to have high potential for success I’m looking forward to creating an actual FFFFFig .

 

Pomegranates - There are cold hardy pomegranates! We’re trialling a bunch of varieties and will try to hybridize the most successful to eventually try to create a Pelham Pomegranate!

 

Nuts - hoping to get an easy to shell heartnut from the seeds we will be growing out sourced from Grimo. Also have been searching the local area for an easy to crack Black walnut since they grow so prolifically in the area and there are many young wild options on the property with the potential to graft something better onto them.