Chivers Delight Apple Trees

Chivers Delight Apple Trees

Chivers Delight apple trees produce a mid season eating apple. Fruit that have been stored for a while are good for stewing.

Read our guide to buying the right apple tree, browse our full range of apple trees or see the full variety of fruit trees.

Characteristics of Chivers Delight Trees:

• Use: Eating. Crisp and juicy, with a lightly aromatic, sweet-sharp flavour. Very ripe fruit lose their crispness and are better for cooking.
• Spur Bearer: suitable for cordons & espaliers, trained on wires.
• Tree's growth habit: Average vigour. Upright form.
• Harvest: Mid October
• Store & ripen in a cool, dry place: Until January

General description of Chivers Delight:

A red flushed dessert apple with all the key qualities: juicy and crisp, sweet and tangy with a fruity aroma. The red flushed skin is on the waxy side, which helps the apple to store quite well, although the flesh tends to lose its crispness and turn a bit powdery after about 6 weeks - we recommend cooking with these fruit.
Chivers Delight is an upright tree, so it's good for tighter spaces and it's a good, reliable cropper.

Rootstocks:
All of our Chivers Delight trees are grown on MM106 rootstocks.

Pollination Partners for Chivers Delight:
Your trees are self sterile and their flowers must be pollinated to make fruit.
Chivers Delight is in pollination Group D.
This means that they will cross-pollinate with other apple trees in pollination Groups C, D and E.

See our Guide to Apple Tree Pollination for a full list of partners & more tips about pollination.

Chivers Delight Disease notes:
Disease susceptibility: Canker (slight).

History & Parentage:
Mr Stephen Chivers of Cambridgeshire, a member of the family run John Chivers Farms, bred Chivers Delight during the in the1930s. It is grown by a few farmers, but it's mainly a garden variety.
The parents were not recorded, but the experts reckon that Cox's Orange Pippin is probably in there.
In an article for the Guardian in 2000, Monty Don wrote that Chivers Delight are one of his 10 favourite apples (we grow 8 of them).

How Apple Trees are Measured & Delivered:
Our fruit trees are delivered in up to 3 shapes and you can also buy selected apple trees as ready made cordons.
Maiden: This unbranched tree is the smallest starting size. You can train maidens into espaliers and cordons.
Cordon: Chivers Delight trees are spur-bearers, so they can be made into cordons and espaliers.
Bush: This is a style of freestanding tree with a short trunk of about 60cm. It will grow to about 3 metres tall.
Half-Standard: This is a freestanding style that will grow into a full sized, "normal" apple tree, about 4 metres tall.