I'm a lot like you.

Did you know that apples grown from seed do not reproduce the same variety?

The only way to reliably reproduce the same variety over and over is by grafting—taking a cutting from the original tree and splicing it onto an established rootstock—the cutting carries the genetic material for the individual variety. So in a very real sense, all commercial apple trees are directly traced to their original tree.

That’s also why there are so many varieties of apples—each time a tree grows from seed, it has the potential to develop into a completely new variety! Not all of them are worth saving, but some of our best-loved apples started out as chance seedlings discovered by some lucky homesteader.