Songfacts®:

• Johnny Appleseed (1774-1845) was a man from Massachusetts (real name John Chapman) known for traveling across the country and planting apple seeds so people would have apples to eat and wouldn't go hungry. In this song, NOFX drummer Smelly (Erik Sandin) is the contemporary Johnny Appleseed, going from town to town and spreading his seed among various ladies he encounters. The lyrics are a string of innuendo relating Smelly's womanizing to growing a garden.
• Bass player Fat Mike is the main songwriter in NOFX. On many of their early songs like this one, he wrote about the people he was hanging around, and he was certainly around Smelly a lot. Their song "Moron Brothers" is also about Smelly - he's one of the morons.
• NOFX guitarist El Hefe (Aaron Abeyta) sang lead on this track and did the spoken parts. He came up with the spoken interludes ("He's down for the cause, holmes") when he was over at Fat Mike's apartment and a drunk guy was outside yelling something similar. El Hefe imitated him and it cracked up Mike, so they incorporated it into the song between verses.
• The song is part of the fourth NOFX album, White Trash, Two Heebs And A Bean. The band was on a steep upward trajectory, and for the first time, they started playing festivals, mostly in Europe. They played a lot of festivals in ensuing years as they got even more popular; one of their favorites was the Warped Tour, which they first played in 1996.