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nafex - Re: [nafex] how to tell if apples are ripe?

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  • From: david.maxwell@dal.ca
  • To: NAFEX Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [nafex] how to tell if apples are ripe?
  • Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 13:44:03 -0300

Last year I supplemented the methods suggested (basically taste and check of
seed colour)
with a starch-iodine test. I have 52 different cultivars, and in most
instances nobody locally
had the slightest idea when they would ripen. The standard starch-iopdine
charts are
cultivar-specific, but I arbitrarily took the point of roughly half staining
as the measure of
ripeness, and this seemed to correlate well with taste. The other
determinant is whether they
will come away cleanly when picked, (lift and twist - if it doesn't come off
in your hand, it isn't
ripe. Leave it for a bit.) This is particularly significant with cultivars
which do not in fact ripen
evenly, and require several pickings, (like Williams Pride).

Of more interest (or puzzlement) is how to judge this year. We have had an
unusually hot
summer, and the commercial growers are talking of their apples ripening "10
days" ahead of
last year. Some of my cultivars are indeed 10-14 days ahead, (Williams
Pride), but some of
them which ripened end September last year are falling in large numbers, and
have brown
seeds. (Difficult to tell by taste because they are cider apples , (Browns
Apple), and pretty
inedible at the best of times.)

>
> How can I tell when to pick them? Probably I should pick some now,
> even if they aren't fully ripe, just to get some apples. You never
> know what critter will take an interest in the tree tomorrow, after
> all.
>
> Thanks,
> Ginda
> eastern MA, zone 6
>






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