Pack up the kids, turn off the cell phones and head to the country to spend a crisp autumn afternoon in an apple orchard! 

Picking apples is a great way to bring the family together and save some money too. Pick your own fruit farms gained popularity in the 1970s as a way to get back to nature and as a reaction to inflation. Their popularity grew throughout the 1990s and today they have become a staple autumn activity. As you hear the kids scream with delight while they pick an apple from a low slung branch, you may think how convenient it is to have apple trees so short and compact for easy picking.

The short apple tree did not happen by accident. The original wild ancestor of today’s apple tree grew to nearly 40 feet tall. Until the twentieth century, farmers had to climb tall apple ladders to carefully pick the fruit. Dwarfing of an apple tree was discovered when cuttings from tall apple trees were grafted onto rootstock from a short tree like a crabapple. Around 1920, the English Malling Research Station began to classify and consistently propagate dwarf root stock. This encouraged orchardists to switch to dwarf trees that only averaged ten to fifteen feet in height. Dwarf trees also grew quicker and were more productive. Today’s rootstock is also bred to resist disease.

No part of the apple tree is left to chance, especially the fruit itself. If apple trees are from seed, you will never get the same apple as the parent. Since plants can reproduce from cuttings, every apple that comes from a cutting is exactly the same as the apple from the parent tree. The cutting is grafted to the rootstock from another tree and the new tree that grows from the cutting produces the exact same apple, year after year. That’s why every Granny Smith or Delicious apple you pick is identical.

Apple trees originated in Western Asia and are among the earliest of domesticated trees. Proof of the apple tree’s early cultivation comes from fossil remains found in the prehistoric lakes of Switzerland from the thirteenth century BC. Over the centuries, many varieties were developed and today there are more than 7,000 apple cultivars.

Except for crabapples, apples are not native to the Americas. Europeans shipped apple cuttings to the Americas as early as 1622. One of the earliest apple orchards in North America was developed in 1625 on Boston’s Beacon Hill. In the early 1800s, John Chapman became known as the folk hero “Johnny Appleseed” as he traveled the “western frontier” of Ohio and Indiana, establishing apple orchards and preaching Swedenborgian Christianity. He sold and bought land and bartered apple seeds for food and clothing with settlers in the Ohio Valley. 

Initially most apples were grown from seed for cider. The practice of grafting ensured quality and consistent eating apples. By the late 1800s, United States farmers were shipping apples to Europe and around the world.

As new varieties of apples are developed, they can quickly be grown on dwarf stock for you to purchase at the store or pick at a local farm. So if you’re looking for a fun family activity this fall, head out to the nearest pick-your-own farm for bushels of fun.