[NAFEX] Thinning
Mark Dorogi
mddorogi at comcast.net
Tue May 27 22:56:48 EDT 2008
My understanding regarding apple storage is that you want the temperature at
or slightly above freezing and the humidity near 100%. I stored some last
fall in the drawer in the bottom of the fridge, sealed in ziplock bags to
keep the moisture in. They kept quite well.
But that was only 20 or 30 apples, so you are right. What would I do if I
got 500 good apples? Go out and get a couple used fridges? Well, maybe one
big fridge in the garage would work. It wouldn't have to run that much in
the cool/cold weather, but it would keep the apples cold during any warm
spells (storage life goes down rapidly as the temperature goes up). I'm not
sure if the humidity level would be right, but I suppose that could be
managed.
I wondered if one of the local friendly small supermarkets had a walk-in
cooler where I could trade a few apples for some storage space.
Mark
SE Michigan
_____
From: nafex-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:nafex-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Doreen Howard
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 10:37 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Thinning
My apple and Asian pears are totally loaded with fruit, too. We had an
infestation of those nasty biting black flies from the northern Wisconsin
lakes this spring. They blew in with all the Canadian fronts we keep having
every other day! Plenty of honey and bumble bees, too.
I figure if I thin to one per cluster and space 6-7 inches apart, I'm still
going to have a huge crop, with seven antique apple varieties, a Golden
Delicious for universal pollen, a Pixe Crunch and Honey Crisp. Then there
are two Asian pears.
With the price of produce, I'm thinking about storage issues for this bumper
crop. Both my husband and I eat an apple for lunch every day, and I use
them to cook, too.
What is the best way to store apples? Our basement never gets below about
55F, even though it may be -20F outside. The garage has two walls that are
common with the house and warmer. It rarely dips below 15F in the middle of
garage and is about 10 degrees warmer at the heated walls. Would crates of
apples with moist sand in the bottom of each work?
Any and all ideas are appreciated.
Doreen Howard
WI-IL Border, Zone 4b
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/private/nafex/attachments/20080527/4099644a/attachment.html
More information about the nafex
mailing list