It's interesting comparing the seedlings. All three are from the apple that resulted from Redlove™ Calypso™ X Golden Sentinel™. (I think the nomenclature is seed parent X pollen parent. In this case, Calypso™ was the seed parent).
Seedling #1. First to germinate. Leaves with quite a lot of red coloration. By far the tallest so far.
Seedling #2. Second to germinate. Almost as tall as Seedling #1. Leaves mostly green but with red veins and stem.
Seedling #3. Quite a bit behind the other two in germinating. Almost as red as Seedling #1. Interstems seem much shorter. Is that because there is more sun now, compared to when Seedling #1 germinated? Or, is that because Seedling #3 has naturally shorter internodes, as expected for a columnar growth habit?
It's interesting to speculate. #1 might be taller because of a lighting issue when it started growing beyond the cotyledons. Being later, #3 may not have had that problem. In the future, for brevity, I'll refer to these as CalGo#1, CalGo#2, CalGo#3. These have grown 4 internodes in their first month. They will be pampered and coddled. If they can do that for the next 6 months, they could be 24 internodes, which might be enough to know. If they get some momentum and speed up, maybe they could get up to a graftable size by the end of the year. Wishful thinking.
I'd like to try some more crosses this year, mainly the Redlove™ Era™ X a columnar. Era™ because I think it's sweeter but has as red flesh as Calypso™. Top choice for columnar would be North Pole, the largest apples, sweetest fruit so far among those in my yard, vs. TastyRed™ which has red skin, reportedly disease resistant, but I haven't tasted them yet. Alternatively, aim for a sweeter red flesh using Jonagold, my sweetest apple (but is there a problem using a triploid?), Gravenstein (ditto), Beni Shogun Fuji (not doing that well for me and I haven't tasted one, but Fuji are quite sweet). I probably can't grow them all out, but maybe make the crosses, first priority being red flesh X columnar, then whatever I want to try, see what takes and what grows. This will depend on multiple things, such as weather, blooming times, and me.
