Just cut my first bowl blanks

Well, I finally got my new "old" lathe set up in the garage and all bolted down to a work bench so today I went out back and cut up some wood from a APPLE tree that came down about 6-8 weeks ago. I wished I knew about sealing the wood back then as many of these already have cracks in them. Anyway I took some of the larger logs and cut them up into workable size blanks. Now....can I assume that I can simple use paint on these to seal them up until I get to turning them. I thought that I had read here that some of you use left over house paint to paint over the wood until you turn it.

Thanks,
Tom

Latex paint will work although it may be a bit late for some of that.
Just doing the end grain is all that is necessary.
You have a bunch of fun turning ahead of you.
Progress pictures are mandatory.

Latex paint will slow down drying and may be enough for many woods. Slowing the drying allows the inside to dry along with the outside and reduces cracking.
Apple is beautiful wood but is one of the worst woods about cracking, I think you need more than latex paint for this. Anchor seal is the brand of sealer that I use, it will slow the drying better than latex paint.
Your best bet to reduce cracking is to turn the wood ASAP.
Second choice (IMHO) would be to rough turn some pieces and seal those, once they are dry turn them again to finish size & thickness. Normal advice is to rough turn the thickness to 10% of the diameter, thinner will be less likely to crack but then they may warp too much to allow re-turning.

I know I have much to learn, and the only plans for this wood at the time the tree came down was for firewood. I'm just now learning all about this bowl turning stuff so I'm now only trying to salvage something out of all that wood. If I can get a couple of potpourri pots out of all of this I would be happy. I hope to start turning something this next week.

Tom

Tom for the first year that I turned I used left over latex house paint. I would put two coats on the ends. I still have a couple of ash and elm blanks that are two years old with no cracks.