How to Grow Wax Apple Seeds? Planting Methods and Precautions
When it comes to wax apple, everyone should be quite familiar with it! Wax apple tastes crisp and delicious. But after you finish eating a wax apple, what do you do with the seeds? If you have some, it's best to keep them. Below I'll share with you how to grow wax apple seeds.
For common wax apple propagation, air layering, cuttings and sowing are mostly chosen. After planting, pruning, fertilizer and water management, etc. can be carried out. The detailed steps are as follows:
1. Sowing
First pick a plump female fruit, eat the flesh and keep the seeds in the middle; then wash the seeds clean, soak the seeds in water for 3 days until they crack and sprout, changing the water once a day; once the seeds have sprouted, they can be planted. The planting temperature is best above 20 degrees, and they generally sprout in about half a month.
2. Propagation
Cuttings: choose 2-3 year old branches, 15-20 cm long, insert 2/3 into a sand bed, taking care to shade and keep moist; they root in 1-2 months. They can be planted in spring from February to April or in autumn from August to September. In high-temperature areas they can also be planted from November to December. The initial row spacing is 4x5 m, thinning after several years to 8x8 m.
3. Shaping and Pruning
After planting, keep one main trunk, cut off the upper end 60 cm above the ground, and remove all the rest except for a few auxiliary branches. If you want to produce winter and spring fruit, you must prune back in February each year, cutting off all the leaves on the plant as well as diseased branches, dead branches, overly dense branches and leggy branches, leaving only two-year-old branches. If it is a partial pruning, shading treatment must be adopted.
4. Fertilizer and Water Management
Wax apple has a high fertilizer requirement. Apply more phosphorus and potassium fertilizer in the early stage. Do not apply too much nitrogen fertilizer during flower bud differentiation. After the fruit is small, apply phosphorus and potassium fertilizer heavily. In some coastal areas, the soil salt content is too high, so fresh water is used to wash the salt, reduce the soil salt content, and promote normal plant growth and fruiting.