Backyard apple breeding

Apple: Harmony

Shane Gadsby -

A sweet crisp, golden apple, with a strong columnar growth habit

  • Vigour: Medium
  • Precociousness: High
  • Resistances: Unknown (presumed scab resistant due to Topaz parentage)
  • Size of fruit: Medium
  • Flowering: Early
  • Fruiting: Early autumn
  • Cropping: Medium to high
  • Ploidy: Diploid
  • Fruit colour: Yellow
  • Flesh colour: White
  • Leaf colour: Green
  • Parentage: Topaz x Bolero
  • Descendants: Unknown
  • Biennialism: None observed
  • Growth habit: Columnar
  • Self-fertile: No

Developed by the Institute for Experimental Botany, Strizovice (Czech Republic) as part of a new series of columnar apples, currently little detail is publicly available about this variety outside the description given by retail nurseries, and is currently exclusively licensed (for Australia) by PlantNet.

Columnar apples descended from the Wijcik McIntosh, such as Harmony's parent: Bolero, are noted heavy bearers.
They are also naturally dwarfing, reaching less than 3 metres when mature, and giving these varieties more precociousness than is typical of non-dwarfing varieties.

As a second generation Columnar apple, I expect that Harmony will be noticeably more improved than many of the Ballerina/Colonnade (aka generation 1 columnar apples) series, likely to be sweeter, more aromatic, and better keeping, with more resistances.

NOTE: I have yet to try this apple directly, having only purchased a tree in 2021, and so have relied on others for information related to this variety.
This entry will be updated as the tree grows and bears.