Can you plant an apple tree from whats essentially a giant clipping?

[Am leaf]

Tldr. If an apple tree is cut at the base and planted will it live

Crap pictures, I know, kind of irrelevant though. Just looking for some opinions on this apple tree that fell over because the base got eaten through by ants

So I cleared out some of these cedars to give it some room last year and it fell over, rather gently, during a recent wind storm. Turns out the trunk broke at ground level and there was obvious ant damage, no pics didn't think about it.

Anyways that was 3 days ago and the ants had obviously left because the holes were full of pill bugs and slugs so I figured it's been fighting so I should give it a chance and cut off the damaged portion at a bias and dug it a hole.

Propped it up with this log and tied it to another tree. Put some compost in the bottom of the hole and packed the rest with compactable material, some rocks on the support log. She's in there quite sturdy now. Ran a drip line from my rain barrels to soak it in.

That's the long and short of it. Any chance it'll survive? It looks like it's in good shape. It's only small, I was able to upright it by hand, it might be 12 feet tall, was producing fruit. Actually the apples were pretty good if not sour. Anything else I could do?

Tis

 

[BeatCJ]

Well, it's not dead yet. I wouldn't count on it, but if it wasn't completely girdled it may have a chance. I would look into saving some of the fruitwood and graft that to a new rootstock to give it the best chance.