Daikon:

I hardly know where to begin here. It would be enough to say that planting seeds of the patented Jazz apple is a very bad idea, but I suppose some additional explanation is in order:

1. Apples always cross-pollinate. Seedlings grown from a store-bought apple will bear little resemblance to the apple you brought home from the supermarket.

2. Seedling apple trees grow 30-40 feet tall, and are very slow to bear. That means you could wait 10 years or more to find that your Jazz seedlings produce tiny, sour crabapples. Odds are, this would be the result.

3. If you want to grow apples, plant a nursery-grown tree on a known rootstock type. If you are in Northern Virginia, as I am, I would recommend Goldrush, Fuji, Pink Lady, Empire etc. There are lots of others, bur seedlings are not among them. Planting seedling apple trees from the supermarket is not a good choice. There are good reasons why apple growers have relied on grafts for about 2,000 years.

4. If you like the flavor of Jazz, you may also like the flavor of Gala, which is said to be one of its parents. Plant one. You might be very pleased by the apples produced on a Gala tree, but not on a seedling tree of Jazz or any other apple.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Thanks Don! For enlightening me to my mistakes. I am in NVA, in Burke actually. You sound like someone with a great deal of experience and perhaps I can visit you one day. I visit Great Falls often, my family have a property up there.

Back to apples. Are there nursaries in this area that you can recommend for fruit trees (apples, asian pears)? How many do I need in order to ensure good pollination. Are there dwarf types that I might be able to grow in my backyard.

Thanks!

"Jazz" is the marketing name for the apple variety that is actually named "Scifresh." (I can see why they felt they needed a different marketing name.) It's from New Zealand. There's no reason you can't just buy a tree of a patented variety. The nursery pays a royalty to the breeder, so it's all legal. As it's a new variety, it might be hard to find, but it's probably possible.

But I'd suggest you go to your local farmers' market in fall and taste all the different kinds of locally grown apples available there. (Or see what they have out of storage now.) Even if a Scifresh apple grown in New Zealand tastes good, that doesn't mean this variety will taste as good grown in your conditions. You should find out what varieties taste best under your conditions.

Apples grown from seed will probably not be tasty. One reason for this is that orchards often use crabapples as pollinators, so even though these seedlings are half Scifresh, the other half is probably crabapple. Well, the flowers will be pretty at least, so I don't want to discourage you from planting them as ornamentals if you have lots and lots of room for experiments.

There are some fine crabapples out there, and they came from crosses like this. Grow the seedlings for fun, if you like, but don't get too attached to them.

A plant patent does not make a plant sterile, and there will be no restrictions on seedlings, if this is only a standard plant patent. However, there are other types of plant variety protection that do restrict breeding or growing seedlings. As long as its for fun, and not commercial purposes, no lawyers will be knocking on your door. Unfortunately, most (all?) new varieties of fruit from NZ are strictly licensed to only big commercial growers, so you will probably not be able to legally purchase a 'Scifresh', aka Jazz, apple tree for your own use.

I'm 12 years too late to this thread...oh well...I'm a huge Jazz apple fan, and as I've just taken up gardening I really wanted to throw some jazz apple trees (which evidently cannot be bought) in my yard. I do like Fuji and Gala and so probably will go with that but wondering if you put jazz seedlings among gala and fuji trees if that's likely to get you close?

Nice to see the NOVA folks participating here!

I bought a Jazz apple tree in Perth. The tag said it would cross pollinate with my pink lady (dwarf), but if flowers different times and the PL is about 8 years old, and the Jazz about 5yo. So I need to know what it will cross with. I did try to hand pollinate.

https://www.orangepippintrees.co.uk/pollinationchecker.aspx