Harvesting and Storing Apples for Winter Use

Knowing When to Pick

Most apples lost in store are lost on the tree, not in the shed. Pick too early and the fruit is sour, small and shrivels to a wrinkled husk by December. Leave it too late and the flesh turns soft and mealy, and the first gale sends half the crop to the grass. The window is narrower than beginners expect, often no more than a fortnight.

The old test still works best. Cup the apple in your palm, lift it gently and give it a quarter turn. A ripe apple comes away cleanly with the stalk intact. If it needs a tug, leave it another few days and try again. A useful confirmation is the pips: cut one open and look for dark brown or black seeds rather than pale cream ones. And always taste one — flavour is the final judge, not the calendar.

Varieties ripen at very different times, so work through the orchard variety by variety rather than stripping everything in one weekend. Early sorts such as Discovery, Worcester Pearmain and Katy are best eaten within a few weeks and will never keep. Mid-season apples like Cox's Orange Pippin and Sunset will hold a couple of months at most. The true keepers — Bramley, Egremont Russet, Ashmead's Kernel and Annie Elizabeth — are the ones that carry you through to February and beyond.

Pick on a dry day, once the dew has lifted. Wet fruit goes into store with a film of moisture on the skin, which is exactly what rot wants.

Picking Without Bruising

Handle the crop as though it were eggs, because in storage terms it may as well be. A bruise that seems trivial in October becomes a soft brown crater by Christmas, and it will take its neighbours with it.

• Use both hands: one to steady the branch, one to lift and twist the fruit.
• Never shake the tree or use a picking pole with a metal hook on dessert apples.
• Line your basket or trug with an old towel, cardboard or straw, and never fill it more than half deep.
• Don't tip fruit from one container to another — move it by hand.
• Keep stalks on. A broken stalk leaves an open wound that mould walks straight into.

Sorting and Grading

Sorting is where the winter's eating is decided. Tip the crop out onto a table in the shade and work through it into three piles: perfect keepers, use-now fruit, and anything you wouldn't offer to a neighbour.

The keepers are unblemished, firm, with the stalk attached and no sign of scab, maggot holes or bruising. The use-now pile takes anything with a knock, a small cut, a bird peck or a bruised shoulder — cook it, freeze it or juice it within the week. Windfalls go straight into this pile, however perfect they look; fruit that has hit the ground has already bruised inside, even if you cannot see it.

Never wash apples destined for storage. Wiping each one with a dry cloth is fine, but washing strips the natural bloom and leaves moisture in the stalk cavity.

Setting Up the Store

Apples want cold, dark, damp and moving air. Aim for between 2°C and 5°C with humidity around 85 to 90 per cent — a frost-free shed, an unheated garage, a north-facing larder or a stone outbuilding all serve well. A kitchen is the worst place in the house, and a heated utility room is not much better.

• Keep the store dark; light encourages sprouting and greening.
• Allow ventilation, but screen gaps against mice. Rodents will find a tray of fruit within days.
• Keep apples well away from potatoes, onions and other root crops. Ripening apples release ethylene gas, which makes potatoes sprout and turns other vegetables bitter.
• Line shelves with newspaper to catch drips and cushion the trays.
• Use shallow slatted wooden boxes, old greengrocer's trays or slatted plastic crates. Deep bins and sealed buckets are a recipe for mould.

Laying Down the Trays

Where space allows, set the fruit in a single layer with a finger's width between each apple so no two are touching. If you must stack deeper, wrap each apple loosely in newspaper or nestle them in clean dry straw, and use only the most flawless fruit for this.

Stack trays no more than four or five high, leaving a gap between them and the wall for air to move. Label every tray with the variety and the date it went in — you will not remember in January. Keep different varieties in separate trays, as they ripen at different rates and one soft sort can hurry the rest along.

Checking Right Through the Winter

Inspect the store once a week, and twice weekly during mild, damp spells. Work through the trays by hand, turning fruit over to check the blossom end and the underside, where brown patches and soft spots first appear. Look out for grey or blue mould, shrivelling skin and that faint sweet-sour smell that means something has already gone over.

Remove any suspect apple the moment you find it, and don't simply drop it back into the tray for later. A single rotting fruit releases ethylene and spores that travel by contact — the old saying about one bad apple is plain horticultural fact. With regular checking, a well-stored crop will keep for months, and you will be eating your own fruit long after the last leaf has fallen.

Put the blemished ones to work rather than binning them. Cut out the damage and stew, purée or freeze the rest within a day or two, or turn a glut into chutney, apple butter, juice or cider. Peelings and cores, simmered with a little sugar and water, make a serviceable vinegar for the kitchen cupboard.