Question
Hi Tom, Good Day to you. I'm roden  here in the philippines and with my homes' high humudity and tropical weather - my question is can i plant apple trees here? can i grow them from seeds from apples i brought from a grocery store? And lastly, what type of soil do apples are accustomed to? - wet? sandy? volcanic soil? Thanks. Allexperts.com is a great help.

Answer
Hi Roden,
Thanx for your question.  I have known a lot of people from the Philippines.  A good friend of mine who has been living here in the U.S. for over 30 years is retiring and moving back to the Philippines on a trial basis.  We just celebrated her retirement a few days ago at a Japanese restaurant.

On to your question.  You can grow an apple tree from the seeds from the fruit one gets at the grocer.  The only problem with that is that the seedling will not produce fruits similar to the fruit one buys at the store.  The reason?  Fruit trees like apples have been hybridized.  The rule in the world of genetics is if something has been hybridized, its resulting offspring will not be the same in appearance, flavor, color, etc.

The big boys and girls who grow the fruit trees for most of the world use grafts.  They take cuttings off of hybridized trees and insert them into stronger root stocks (usually wild versions of fruit trees) by using a knife and making a slit into the side of a tree and using botannical tape and rooting hormone.  In a few months, the graft becomes the dominant growth and as long as the root stock is not buried underneath earth, the graft will take off as the new growth.  Rose growers do this with all of their hybrids and in America and Europe, all fruit trees are usually grafted onto wild root stocks.

In America, there is an awakening about the danger to the biodiversity of our food plants including fruit trees.  It has been said that there are only 6 original species of apple left in the U.S.  We now have a large contingent of gardners, horticulturalists and farmers who are trying to safeguard the biodiversity of our food crops.  I don't want to sound like I'm preaching, but, I guess I am.  One of the reasons the potato famine occurred in Ireland in the 1840s was because of a lack of biodiversity amongst the types of seed potatoes that were being planted there.  The Irish had embraced the potato after its introduction to Europe in the 16th century and it became a staple crop.  Unfortunately, they only planted certain varieties and when the potato blight came, their crops succumbed to this disease.  It ended up costing them 1/4 of their population which also instigated a massive emmigration of Irish people to England, Europe, America, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia...an incredible brain and genetic drain to other countries.  To this day, nearly 30 million people in the U.S. claim Irish ancestry.  The way they defeated the potato blight was to go back to South America and find different types of potatoes that were resistant to the "potato blight".  Nowadays, there are many hybrid potatoes that have been bred to be resistant to potato blight and other potato diseases.

I guess this might be more info then you asked after.  I hope it helps.  Let me know if you need more info.
thx,
Tom