Golden Delicious Apple Trees

Golden Delicious Apple Trees: Eating, Cooking

Golden Delicious is one of the biggest selling supermarket eating apples worldwide. Any fruit produced on such a massive scale, stored, and shipped long distance is going to suffer compared to a home-grown specimen; if you've never had a good one from the shops, you be surprised when you bite into one that you grew yourself: they really deserve the name Delicious!
The light, chewily crisp flesh is bursting with sweet juice and a great aroma. They are great for sauces, apple butter, fruit sorbets and are good to use in salads because the cut fruit takes a long time to turn brown.
Your apples are ready to pick in late October and store extremely well (this is why they are so popular commercially) - up to about 8 months in ideally cool and dry conditions.

This hardy tree has lovely flowers over a long period that often misses the late frosts: another reason that farmers love them. It has a spreading growth habit and is heavy cropper, with a bit of a biennial tendency. 

Browse our other apple varieties, or all our fruit trees.
Read our guide to buying apples.

Delivery season: Bareroot plants are delivered in late Autumn to Spring, about November-March inclusive. Pot grown plants, year round. 

Features:

• Sold as bareroot normal trees, or potted mini patio trees.
• Primarily eating: Sweet and juicy.
• Fine in the kitchen, salads
• Spur bearer (Good for cordons & espaliers)
• Not self fertile
• Great pollinator
• Pollination Group C-D
• Frost resistant flowers
• Some biennial tendency
• Not recommended for the North or Scotland: try Ashmead's Kernel
• Crops in October.
• Stores well

Growing Golden Delicious Apples

Apples like rich, well drained soil, and will thrive on clay in locations that do not get waterlogged in winter.
A full day of sun and shelter from the wind is ideal. 

• Golden Delicious performs best in the warmer, drier South and East of the UK; a close alternative for the North is Ashmead's Kernel.

Disease notes:
Very resistant to most common diseases, except Cedar Rust (which needs a cedar tree as a host). 

Rootstocks:
We use MM106 for Golden Delicious, the UK standard for medium-sized trees, ideal for gardeners. It gives a half-standard about 4m tall, and a bush about 3m. 
MM106 maidens are suitable for cordons and espaliers.
Dwarf patio trees are on M9.

Pollination Partners for Golden Delicious

Your trees are self sterile and their flowers must be pollinated to make fruit.
Golden Delicious is in flower mid-season, so cross-pollinates with most apple trees, across Pollination Groups B, C, D, and E.

Use our Fruit Pollination Checker to quickly find pollination partners, or Apple Tree Pollination Guide to learn more.

Growing Mini Patio Trees in Pots:
Dwarf trees do well in large containers of rich potting soil. During summer, it is essential to provide consistent moisture, without overwatering, and to feed lightly. 
Change as much of the compost as you can every three years.

Notes on planting apple trees:
All fruit trees like a rich soil with decent drainage, protection from the wind and plenty of sun. Apple trees like clay soil, as long as it is not prone to bad waterlogging.

Prepare your site before planting:
Improving the soil helps trees establish quickly and be productive for years. Preparing weeks or months in advance gives best results: fill the planting hole back up, don't leave it open to either dry out or fill with water.

• Destroy weeds and grass,
• Dig the soil over, remove stones, then mix in well rotted compost or manure down to the depth of about 2 spades, unless you are on heavy clay:
• On thick clay soil, only dig over the soil to break it up. Apply organic matter as a mulch over the soil after planting.

Spacing apple trees:

• Freestanding bushes: 15-18 feet (5-6m) between trees and rows.
• Freestanding half-standards: 18-30 feet (6-10m) between trees and rows.

In general, allow 1 more metre between rows than between trees along the row.

• Wire-trained cordons: 60-100cm apart along a row.
• Espaliers: 10-18 feet (3.5-6m) apart.

• Watch how to plant a fruit tree for a bush or half-standard.
• To grow a cordon or espalier, you need to install sturdy training wires.

Pruning apple trees: 

• Maidens can be pruned in any style, including into bushes or half-standards.
• Bushes - start here when you buy a bush.
• Half-standards - start here when you buy a half-standard.

Accessories:
For bush and half standard apple trees, a tree planting pack, which includes a wooden support stake & rubber tie (a bamboo cane is enough support for a maiden), and a biodegradable mulch mat, with pegs, to preserve soil moisture stops and prevent weeds.

We strongly recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of all transplanted trees.

Winter wash and greasebands are effective, organic pest prevention.

Did You Know?

In the 1890's, Mr L.L Mullins sent his teenage son out to scythe down the weeds around their farm in the hills of Porter's Creek in West Virginia. The careful boy spotted the sapling tree and mowed around it, year after year. By the time the tree was mature, the farm had passed into the hands of Mr Mullins' brother Anderson, who sent some of the fruit to the Stark Brothers nursery - a large nursery that was already producing the famous American apple, Red Delicious (Red and Golden Delicious are not closely related).
The Stark Brothers saw its value and bought the tree with about 10 square metres of land around it. The first orchard of grafted Golden Delicious trees came into production in 1914 and the original tree died in the 1950's.
We may never know what its parents are, but a cross between Grimes Golden and Golden Reinette is a good guess, as both trees were common in the area at the time.

Apple Tree Delivery Shapes:

Most of our fruit trees are delivered in up to 3 shapes (maiden, bush, and half standard), and you can buy selected varieties as ready-made cordons and/or potted mini patio trees: scroll up to see what's in stock. 

Maiden: Unbranched tree, the most basic starting size, which you can train into the other forms (apart from mini patio trees).
Bush: Freestanding tree with a short trunk about 60cm tall. It will grow to about 3m. Ideal for small gardens.
Half-Standard: A freestanding form with a trunk about 120cm tall. It will grow into a full sized, "normal" apple tree, about 4m. Ideal for orchards, easy to mow underneath.

Cordon: Golden Delicious is a spur-bearer, suitable for cordons and espaliers.
Mini Patio Tree: Only sold pot-grown, these use a dwarfing rootstock to drastically reduce the tree's vigour and restrict the mature size. They are suitable for large patio containers, and for small gardens where a normal-sized bush or half-standard form won't fit.

Guide to Fruit Tree Sizing.