Last edited on October 20, 2026. View history
Golden Delicious Apple
A variety of apple
How to sow golden delicious apple: Transplant bare-root plant
Sun requirement for golden delicious apple: Plant in Full Sun
Golden Delicious apples are a milder flavored apple cultivar with thin yellow skin and crispy, sweet, pale white flesh. They can be eaten fresh or baked. Blossoms are white or pink. Trees have a chilling requirement of 600-700 hours. Golden Delicious apples are self-pollinating, but can benefit from nearby trees with the same bloom period, and are great pollinators for apple trees that don't self-pollinate. Apples are propagated through grafting because seeds do not breed true. Semi-dwarf and dwarf sizes are available. Depending on the size chosen, the tree will bear fruit within 2-5 years of planting.
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Golden delicious apple facts
Lifespan
Height × spread
450cm × 450cmRow Spacing
450cmGrown for
fruit harvested 1 timeCrop cycle
Max altitude
Optimal light
What are growing degree days?
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For golden delicious apple, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 8°C and a shortest growing cycle of 180 days at its best temperature, about 2250 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your golden delicious apple will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Growing golden delicious apples
- Dig a wide hole and add compost 1 week before planting out
- Stake and tie the young tree at planting out
- Water the young tree at planting out every week
- Mulch around the trunk 2 weeks after planting out
- Prune to shape the tree 12 months after planting out
- Thin the fruit 4 weeks before first harvest
- Pick ripe apples at first harvest every week
- Prune after the leaves fall 6 months after first harvest
How members grow golden delicious apples
Sunniness
Planted from
Harvested for
Photos
Photos
Golden delicious apple harvests
Video
Where golden delicious apples grow
Only plantings by members who have set their locations are shown.
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Who's planted golden delicious apples
- maco food forest · Wheaton-Glenmont, MD
maco
Golden delicious apple harvests
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shiny harvested not specified.
over 1 year ago
shiny harvested not specified.
View all golden delicious apple harvests
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Time to harvest
If sown now, expect a first harvest in about 180 to 320 days.
From the growing cycle in the FAO EcoCrop database, which is the same wherever it is grown.
Ecological requirements
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Malus domestica Borkh.
| Family / Taxonomy | Magnoliopsida Rosidae Rosales Rosaceae |
|---|---|
| Killing temperature | growth: -2 °C, rest: -30 °C |
| Life form | tree |
| Life span | perennial |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | deep (>>150 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | medium, light |
| Optimal soil fertility | high |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | short day (<12 hours), neutral day (12-14 hours), long day (>14 hours) |
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