Growing apples from seed

quadrifoglio verde

Hi all, hopefully I can get a bit of advice.
The site that my parents house sits on, once used to have a massive orchard. Sadly, the builder removed all but one apple tree which still continues to give lovely Bramley apples each year, even though it was removed from its original location. At an estimate, the tree is 30 years plus and quite overgrown.
However this apple tree sits outside the boundary of my parents site and has recently been purchased by another developer.
So it looks like this apple tree doesn't have much time left.

What I'm wondering is, is it possible to grow a new tree from seed? You can't buy Bramleys like these in the shop anymore, it seems to be a really old type.
If so, what's the best way of going about it?
If not, any other suggestions?
Cheers

Oldtree

If you grow from seed then you get a hybrid, ie a combination of 2 parents, that will not be exactly the same as the parent you want. Apples tend to revert to cookers from seed. Apple seeds need 6 weeks in the fridge to chill before trying to germinate and can take up to 2 years to germinate.

You can get exactly the same plant if you graft material from the parent plant onto a host rootstock. There are a number of different rootstock available.

I think these offer the service, give them a ring:

http://www.irishseedsavers.ie/blog/2013/research/apples/list-of-varieties-for-graft-requests-from-issa-orchards/

learn to do grafting yourself:

http://www.fruitandnut.ie/workshops.html
http://www.theorganiccentre.ie/node/1513

I have grown apples from seed and intend to use them as rootstock to graft family trees onto. The grafted plants need serious minding for a year after being grafted.

magicbastarder

as oldtree said, apple seeds won't come true to the parent tree.
the seed in the apple is 50% the genes from the parent tree and 50% the genes from the pollinating tree (and rarely the same mix of genes too), so grafting is the way to go.

quadrifoglio verde

There is another tree in a neighbouring garden and Im guessing its the pollinating tree. With regards to grafting, the tree in question is fairly old, there is a green moss/lichen on most of the branches, and the leaves are brittle as opposed to healthy.
Also the branches in question, many are brittle and even though they're the newer branch, when broken (accidentally), the wood is very dry.

Oldtree

What I have done with an old tree (with the owners permission) is to remove a branch or two in winter to attempt to get some nice fresh grafting material off the tree the following year. You are looking for pencil thickness as graft material about a foot long.