Kitchen Garden Forum

We've been buying several varieties of English apples this year, mostly from farm shops etc. and I've been disappointed to find most of them much sharper than I remembered them being in previous years. When I mentioned this to one person he said that they were probably picked too early and I'm sure that another couple of weeks on the trees getting a little more late sunshine would have made a difference. I guess that it's a question of cash flow for the orchard owners. Until the crops are sent to market they get no money, but it seems to me that they're shooting themselves in the foot when they do this because people buy them, taste them and are then put off and return to buying foreign apples which have heavy airmiles attached to them.
Another query: if apples are picked too early like this and left out on trays in the sunshine, will they sweeten up, or will they just start to wrinkle more quickly? I currently have a large bag of them which are too sharp to eat in their current state and wonder how I can improve them.

Primrose wrote:if apples are picked too early like this and left out on trays in the sunshine, will they sweeten up, or will they just start to wrinkle more quickly? I currently have a large bag of them which are too sharp to eat in their current state and wonder how I can improve them.

They might well improve. I wouldn't put them out in the sunshine, though. We used to acquire a good haul of Conference pears years ago, from a neighbour who had far too many for their own use. We'd put them into drawers lined with newspaper in an old chest of drawers in our garage. They'd gradually ripen there, and we'd pick out the good ones for use when they were ready. You can do just the same with apples — leave them on racks or shallowly in boxes, in a cool and dark place. it does depend a bit on the variety, though, how sweet they become or indeed whether they will improve in storage at all. A lot of old varieties were selected to be good at the beginning of the year following storage, in the days before we imported our apples. They are usually quite sour when first picked. We used to have a lot of Spartan, and they were unremarkable when first picked, in October, but were sensationally sweet after Christmas.

Hi Primrose,
By keeping Apples, as Felix has said, the acids convert to sugars.
Cider Apples used to be left on the orchard floor for at least a month or more but now they are gathered in but not used for a considerable length
of time, this is to allow the same thing to happen before the Cider process even begins.
JB.

I knew an old boy in Essex who swore by Bramleys as an eating apple, he would pick them, wrap each one in newspaper and store them in his shed on shelves, he would start eating them after christmas when they were 'meller' as he put it.
Regards, Essexboy.