It is my understanding that trying to raise garlic from grocery store bought cloves are prone to die of disease. Somehow. Half remembering something I read while considering trying to grow garlic in my garden.
Store bought everything is often not really good for home growing.
Trees in industrial agriculture are often spliced (don’t know the proper English word) so that the root is a different variety that’s stronger than the branch variety that produces the actual e.g. apples. If you plant the seeds, you’ll get a weak root.
Also, often enough the varieties you can buy are not really suited for the local climate. Peaches do grow where I live, but store bought peaches won’t survive the emotional coldness of a northern German winter.
I get you peaches, I also just barely survive the emotional coldness of a northern German winter.
Grafted apple trees are often a flavorful top connected to a weak root. Weak root = smaller trees that can be planted closer together and are easier to pick. If you plant apple seeds, you will probably get a ginormous tree with fruit only useful for cider making (a la Johnny Appleseed’s business model) because they don’t taste good either fresh or in baked goods.
Weak roots are also used with grafted trees for another reason, the tree will carry fruits earlier and more numerous at the start.
A tree with normal or strong roots might carry a lot of fruits after 10 years when it got pretty big, but before it is just a few.
But strong roots also go deeper, so less/no watering is needed, which is why I prefer strong roots, I don’t have to make money with the trees in my garden after all.
