One of my favorite things to do this time of the year is to pick an apple right off the tree and eat while walking through the garden. Unfortunately, my old apple tree is in it's last years. I have more planted so hopefully they will start producing before the old one goes out completely. The pear trees on the other hand are having a banner year. Here are a few tips to help with your harvest.
To obtain the best quality fruit in the home orchard, apples and pears must be harvested at the time of maturity. After the harvest, proper storage is a necessity to maximize storage life. Different varieties are harvested at different times so there are a few things to consider before you pick all the fruit from the tree. The harvest period is influenced by weather conditions during the growing season. Gardeners should base the harvest time on the maturity of the fruit rather than a specific calendar date.
There are several ways to tell if an apple is ready. Mature apples are firm, crisp, juicy, nicely colored, and have developed the flavor of the variety. Red color alone is not a reliable indicator of maturity. Red Delicious apples, for example, often turn red before the fruit are mature. Fruit harvested too early are astringent, sour, starchy, and poorly flavored. Apples harvested too late are soft and mushy.
One way to tell if the apples are getting ready is to watch for a couple of apples to fall from the tree. Apple trees will naturally drop their apples when they are ripe, but when that happens there is not much time left, they might even be a little too ripe. When apples are ripe, they should be fairly easy to pick from the tree with a simple upward twist of the apple.
Of course the best test is the taste test. The apple should be sweet or tart depending on the variety. A ripe apple will not taste bland or starchy. It is important to get to know the variety of apple you have and what it should taste like. You can do this by starting to eat one off the tree every couple of days to see when the optimum taste has been reached.
Pears are a different story, most types of fruit reach their peak on the tree, pears need to be picked before ripening. If left on the tree, pears ripen from the inside out and, by the time they seem to be at the ripe stage, they are beyond it , usually mushy with a mealy texture beneath the skin.
To avoid such results, you must pick pears when they are mature but not yet fully ripened. Figuring out the answer to "when are pears ripe?" can be difficult. When in season, a mature pear will still be firm to the touch, so feel won't be a strong indicator. You can't really go by sight either; a mature pear could be a variation of colors, like green, yellow, or even blush, depending on the variety.
The best way to tell if a pear is ready to harvest is by taking the fruit in your hand and tilting it horizontally. The mature fruit will easily come away from the branch at this angle (as opposed to its natural vertical hanging position). If it is not yet ready for picking, it will hold on to the branch.
Once harvested, most pears will require about a week to ripen at room temperature (about 65-72F). If you store the fruit in a paper bag, you can speed up this process so that it will ripen in just a few days. You may also choose to store your harvested pears with an apple or banana - fruits that are more prone to releasing ethylene gas, which accelerates the ripening process. (Beware, ethylene gas may cause your pears to break down faster than anticipated, starting from the inside out, so it may be better to be patient and let the pears ripen on their own at room temperature.)
Happy gardening!
Peter Sutter is a life long gardening enthusiast and a participant in the MU Extension's Master Gardener program. Gardening questions can be sent to [email protected].