Backyard apple breeding

Apple: Ballerina Bolero

Shane Gadsby -

A crisp, juicy apple with a spritely flavours.

  • Vigour: Medium
  • Precociousness: Medium
  • Resistances: None noted
  • Size of fruit: Medium
  • Flowering: Early
  • Fruiting: Early
  • Cropping: Medium
  • Ploidy: Diploid
  • Fruit colour: Green with little to moderate red blush
  • Flesh colour: Yellow
  • Leaf colour: Green
  • Parentage: Wijcik McIntosh x Greensleeves
  • Descendants: Harmony
  • Biennialism: None observed
  • Growth habit: Columnar
  • Self-fertile: No

Developed at the East Malling Research Station, Kent (UK) in 1976 as part of a program to breed columnar apples using the Wijcik McIntosh sport variety.
It is a cross between the aforementioned Wijcik, and a variety called Greensleeves that produces medium sized, crisp and somewhat tart apples.

Naturally dwarfed columnar apples are well suited to pots, or gardens with little space.
Their drawback comes in the fact that they have very little resistance to any diseases or pests, and so are best grafted to a rootstock that has a strong resistance set (M106, and M111, are well suited)

NOTE: I have yet to try this apple directly, and so have relied on others for information related to this variety.
This entry will be updated if I purchase a tree.