One of my favorite varieties of apple trees is Uslada, bred by domestic breeders back in 1961. I have been growing such a fruit tree in my garden for many years and am very pleased with the yields. This apple tree will please you too if you follow my example and plant it on your personal plot. What is good about Delight, I will tell you in my note.
Description of the variety
Delight is a fast-growing variety of apple trees. The tree begins to bear fruit already in the fifth year of life. Moreover, the yield of the variety is consistently high.
I collect 80 kg of delicious fruits from the apple tree.
The apples themselves deserve special attention. They, as you already understood from the name of the variety, have an excellent taste: sweet, with a slight sourness, somewhat reminiscent of ripe raspberries. Their tender and aromatic pulp is characterized by juiciness, fine-grained, white-pink color.
These are beautiful dessert apples. They are round, small in size (weight - 130 g), covered with a thin skin of deep red color with a pinkish tint.
Uslada apples are not only tasty and beautiful, but also rich in vitamins, minerals, pectins, and sugars. This is a very healthy delicacy presented to us by nature and domestic breeding.
The harvest ripens, as a rule, by the end of August. It is noteworthy that even very ripe apples do not crumble from the branches.
To be able to enjoy these dessert apples in winter, I pick them unripe, put them in a wooden box and leave it in a cool dry place. Ripe apples should be eaten in a hurry within 3-4 weeks or preserved.
This variety of apple trees, in addition to good yield and excellent taste of the fruit, has many other advantages:
- the possibility of growing in any region of the country;
- frost resistance;
- endurance;
- immunity to rainy weather;
- resistance to damage by scab and other diseases;
- early ripening of fruits;
- good keeping quality and transportability of the crop.
In my opinion, Uslada also has several drawbacks:
- self-fertility (for a tree to bear fruit, next to it you need to plant an apple tree of another variety, like Bogatyr, Grushovka, Orlik);
- the need for annual pruning of the crown, which is thickened in trees of this variety.
How to grow Delight
Apple trees of this variety grow especially well on fertile soil such as black soil.
If you decide to plant such an apple tree in your country house, do it in the last days of April or in September. Plant by following the step-by-step instructions:
- Dig a planting hole in a week (depth - 0.7 m). If you plan to plant multiple trees, make holes 5 m apart.
- Loosen the soil in the pit. Add fertilizers: humus or compost (15 kg), superphosphate (25 g), potassium fertilizer (15 g), nitrogen fertilizer (10 g).
- Place the seedling in the center of the planting hole. Spread out the roots. Cover with earth, holding the tree by the top.
- Lightly compact the soil under the seedling. Tie it to a wooden peg.
- Water the apple tree.
A week after planting, the tree will need to be watered again, and the ground under it will need to be mulched.
Taking care of the Delight apple tree is not difficult. I regularly water the tree, apply top dressing. I do not neglect the loosening of the soil after each irrigation.
To get a good harvest of apples, I feed the fruit tree in the fall with mullein or humus. I apply the fertilizer to the area of the trunk circle. Consumption rate - 5 kg per 1 m².
When the apple tree blooms in spring, I apply complex fertilizer. I prepare a liquid top dressing as follows: I dissolve 1/2 cup of the substance in 5 liters of water, leave for 3 days. Before use, the resulting concentrate is diluted with water again (1:10).
Before the sap flow begins, I will definitely be cutting the crown. I carefully thin it out and remove the tops. I cover each cut with garden pitch.
Although Delight is resistant to diseases and pests, in the spring I prophylactically treat a tree with unblown buds with Bordeaux liquid. After budding, I apply Targo insecticide.
On the eve of wintering, I cover the apple tree with spruce branches and a film to protect it from hares.
Pay attention to the wonderful Delight apple tree. It has many virtues and deserves to take its rightful place among other fruit trees in your garden.
Read also: Three ways to cleanse the garden from infection and restore its fertility
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