Fresh Apples!
I munched a GingerGold apple the other day, one I had just picked off a tree. It was crunchy and had a nice tart bite to it – not much perks up the palate like a just picked apple.
The apple crop looks great! While all the rain made for a tough year battling weeds and diseases, fruit have grown very well.
Apple harvest is just getting going and will last through October. Our mainline varieties like McIntosh and Cortland, HoneyCrisp, and Macoun will ripen in September while October will bring varieties like Mutsu, Delicious, and Golden Delicious. Of course, right now it is summer varieties we are eating, ones like Paulared, Gingergold, and Pristine.
How do you know when an apple is ripe and ready to eat?
We use a lot of techniques to tell when they are ripe. The most important is of course taste. Color is another important sign we watch. In particular, we watch the ground color (that background of green beneath the red). As the apple ripens, the green gradually lightens. Seed color is another characteristic we study. As fruit ripen, seeds gradually turn from white to white streaked with brown to solid brown.
One test we often use in commercial orchards is called the starch/iodine test. Apples are cut in half and the cut surface sprayed with an iodine solution. Iodine attaches to starch, but not sugar. Since a key change in apples as they ripen is the conversion of starch to sugar (they get sweet!), we can determine just how ripe an apple is by how much starch (or black strained area on the cut surface) remains.
- A starch-iodine test is often used to determine when apples are ready. Starch (stained black by the iodine) indicates it is not yet ready. Photo: W.Lord
But in the end, we eat them. And when they taste just right, we pick them.
Bill Lord, August 19, 2009
Posted: August 19th, 2009 under Fruit Growers Journal.