North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Stephen Sadler" <Docshiva@Docshiva.org>]

There are three brands of these bags I know of.  In my home trials, the Biofresh brand significantly outperforms the green bags.  The green bags are nice to have because of their shape, though; they’ll hold long things like celery and scallions, and seem to possibly work better for bananas.  I don’t notice huge differences in how apples keep with the bags – good keepers keep better than poor keepers, regardless, it seems, of whether I use the bags or not.  I think that things that keep well on their own like drier conditions, and may actually not do as well in bags.  But things like lettuce do really well in those bags; I’ve had lettuce keep crisp and fresh-tasting for months.

There are also things – disks and egg-shaped plastic – that contain the ethylene –absorbing clay.  Could be a couple of those tossed in with the apples would help. 

If you’re talking about any sort of quantity, though, and you don’t have good storage conditions, you might want to try dried apples, sweet or dry cider, apple butter, canned applesauce, canned pie filling, freezing treated (with lemon juice or other food acid) slices, etc.  Keep your best keepers for eating, and process the others.  I vary my processing methods.  Given a lot of apples, I’ll use a different method per batch.  Some fruits preserve much better by one method than others, and they don’t get that varied treatment – but apples keep well by several methods.

 

~ Stephen

 

From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of EmailUser samurphy
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 8:44 AM
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Extending fruit storage life (Jim Fruth)

 

Jim Fruth wrote:
> Sam Murphy asked, "What is the best way to make them (apples) last if there
> is no room in the refrigerator and the
> basement never gets very cool?"
>
>     Store them in "Debbie Meyer Green Bags."  These are (reusable) plastic
> bags that absorb and remove ethylene gas.  So far, I've only used them for
> extending the life of ripe pears and keeping bananas as fresh as the day I
> bought them.  Don't throw them away after one use because their effect lasts
> a l-o-n-g time......

I've seen those advertised on TV. I always assume things advertised that
way don't work. I'm pleasantly surprised to hear that they DO work.
I looked them up online and bookmarked this site:
https://www.greenbags.com/?cid=381252

 

The bags are available several places including Amazon.com   There are mixed reviews on produce in general for storage up to 1 month.  Apples are not included in the evaluations.  Have you tried them for long periods?

I've heard of using newspaper to wrap pears for storage.  Would that work in the same way for apples?

Shirley

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