Pre-order for spring 2024We are now accepting pre-orders for the spring 2024 planting season.
Orange Pippin Trees USA logoSpecialist fruit trees for your orchard or back-yard

Golden Delicious apple tree

Golden Delicious
Golden Delicious is listed in the RHS Plants for Pollinators
  • Picking season: Late
  • Self-fertility: Partially self-fertile
  • Pollination group: 4

Golden Delicious is increasingly sought out by apple enthusiasts for growing in home orchards as word spreads that if you look beyond the bland reputation of the supermarket examples, this is an apple that truely merits its name.

Home-grown Golden Delicious is a very different proposition from the supermarket apples you may be used to. It is a very sweet apple of course, but the the sweetness is more like that of raw cane sugar than the bland sweetness you might be expecting. The trick is to pick the apples when they are fully ripe, at which point the familiar pale green skin turns to a green-gold hue.

Home-grown Golden Delicious still apples retain the advantages of commercially grown examples - versatile for eating fresh or using in the kitchen, and can be kept for several months in a cold shed or in the fridge if picked slightly early.

Golden Delicious apple trees for sale

  • Semi-dwarf 1-year bare-root tree $37.95
    Mature height: 8ft-12ft after 10 years
    Semi-dwarf rootstock
    Out of stock
    Alert me

How to grow

Golden Delicious is easy to grow, and very productive across a wide range of climate zones.

It is potentially a good pollinator for many other apple varieties, particularly varieties descended from (Red) Delicious, McIntosh, and Cox, because it flowers over a long period in the mid-season and produces larger quantities of pollen than most other varieties. The only caveat is that it is not a good pollinator for those varieties which are closely related to it.

Advice on fruit tree pollination.

History

Golden Delicious is almost certainly a seedling of an old American variety called Grimes Golden, and was discovered in West Virginia in the1890s. The original tree survived until the 1950s, by which time Golden Delicious was firmly established as one of the most widely-planted of all apple varieties.

Golden Delicious characteristics

  • Gardening skillAverage
  • Self-fertilityPartially self-fertile
  • Pollination group4
  • Pollinating othersGood
  • Picking seasonLate
  • UsesEating freshCulinary
  • Keeping (of fruit)3 months or more
  • FireblightSome susceptibility
  • CankerSome susceptibility
  • ScabSome susceptibility
  • Cedar apple rustVery susceptible
  • MildewSome susceptibility
  • Cold hardiness (USDA)Zone 5 (-29C)
  • Summer maximum temperaturesCool ( 20-24C / 68-75F)Warm (25-30C / 76-85F)
  • Chill requirementLow-chill - 700
  • Country of originUnited States
  • Period of origin1850 - 1899
  • Fruit colorGreenGreen - lightGreen / Yellow