Apple (Malus) Golden Delicious M26

One of the world's most popular apples, 'Golden Delicious' delivers everything you'd expect from a classic garden variety — reliable, heavy crops of crisp, sweet fruit that only gets better with a little patience. Grafted onto the semi-dwarfing M26 rootstock, it makes a compact, manageable tree reaching around 3m in height and spread, ideal for the average garden.

Fragrant white blossom, gently tinged pink, appears in April and May, followed by greenish-yellow fruit that ripens to a warm gold, sometimes with light russeting. Left to fully ripen, the flesh turns honeyed and very sweet; picked a touch earlier, it's crisp and fresh. Harvest from November, with the fruit storing well right through to February.

'Golden Delicious' is partially self-fertile and will crop reasonably well on its own, though yields improve significantly with a pollination partner flowering in the same period (Group 4) or an adjacent group (3 or 5) — it's also a generous pollinator itself, making it a useful tree to have in a mixed orchard. M26 typically needs staking for the first few years while the root system establishes, and trees usually begin cropping within a year or two, with substantial harvests from year 3–4.

Plant in full sun in moist, well-drained soil, and prune each winter to maintain an open, productive shape. As with all apple varieties, the pips contain small amounts of naturally occurring toxins, so they're best removed if the fruit is being used for cooking with children in mind.

Each tree is hand-selected before dispatch. Available from Pengelly Garden Centre.