How to store apples at home
When buying apples in a store in winter or late autumn, many notice that fruits with a glossy shine and attractive presentation cannot please with either a rich taste or aroma. Since the price of apples in winter increases significantly, and the naturalness of purchased apples is in question, the best option remains – to prepare ripe apples from your garden for storage.
This article provides information on how to store apples at home, observing all the necessary conditions for storing and preserving useful properties.
Secrets of Proper Storage
For long-term storage of the apple crop:
- choose a suitable variety;
- remove fruit carefully from the tree;
- follow the packaging rules and sort the fruit.
How long apples can be stored depends largely on the variety and its ability to preserve its presentation and taste until winter.
Check the seasonality of the variety, for example, summer varieties will not be able to lie at a temperature of +2 … + 7 degrees for more than 1 month. Autumn apples are most often stored in the range from 0 ° C to + 7 ° C for up to 5-7 weeks. Representatives of winter varieties show themselves best of all: if the temperature is maintained no more than + 4 ° C, fruits will be able to retain their properties and taste up to 5-6 months.
The most optimal varieties that can be stored until winter are: “Bogatyr”, “Melba”, “Welsey”, “Simirenko”, “Jonathan”, “Vityaz”, “Crimean Aurora”.
For long-term storage, be sure to observe the correct temperature regime (-1 to +2 degrees), as well as a humidity of about 90%.
Apple storage tips and rules:
- For successful storage, specimens must be free of external damage, worms. Fruit without a stalk is stored much less – try not to tear it off.
- If you plan to sprinkle the fruit with sand, its moisture content should be no more than 5%. It is very important that the apples do not spoil.
- Do not use a straw – over time, the fruit begins to smell unpleasant.
- Apple trees do not like an excess of fertilizers, as a result of which the fruits from such trees rarely survive long-term storage.
- Do not water the tree when the fruits begin to ripen, as this affects the most important property of apples during storage – keeping quality.
- The manual collection method is the most suitable for collection for storage. On sale, you can find a special tool – a fruit picker, but with it there is a high probability – to damage the wax film of the apple.
- How to harvest correctly: put on mittens and, lifting the apples one by one, slightly scroll, trying not to tear off the stalk. The collection is made only in the absence of precipitation. The most important thing is not to damage the outer shell of the apple, do not scratch it, do not drop it on the ground, as this will significantly impair its storage capacity.
Storage in an apartment and in a private house
On an industrial scale, large farms store fruit in a warehouse. These large rooms often have large cold rooms or cold rooms – ventilated refrigerated storage facilities. In such chambers, apples can remain usable for 5-6 months, even in the hottest season.
For owners of private houses, a basement or cellar can be used as storage. Before you put fresh apples in storage – prepare and treat the room. To do this, you will need to prepare a solution from the following components:
- lime (freshly slaked)
- copper sulfate
- water (about 20 l)
We whitewash the walls with lime in an amount of about 1.5 kg, 150 g of copper sulfate, and water in a volume of 10 liters. If you have a sprayer, dilute about 500 g of ferrous sulfate in 10 liters of water and treat the floor with it. Special preparations-rodenticides will save you from rodents in the cellar.
Among seasoned gardeners, a popular storage method is by burying apples in the ground in plastic bags or bags. You can use thick plastic wrap for this purpose. We dig a hole 45 cm deep, to protect from mice we put a juniper or spruce on the bottom. We pack the fruits in 6 kg bags, put them in a hole, and bury them.
You can mark the place using flags or sticks for easy removal: tie the ends of the rope to a stick, then simply pull and easily remove the bag.
For additional immunity of the fruit to rot, you can treat the apples with an ultraviolet lamp. When irradiating, the fruits must be turned over once, and the irradiation distance should be about 1.5 m. Processing time: 25 minutes.
The easiest way to store apples in an apartment is in plastic bags. Distribute about 3-4 kg of one type of fruit in bags, tie and make 4 cuts or holes for air to enter. With a small temperature range (-1 … + 2 degrees), apples will perfectly retain their properties in winter. The same method exists in another version: bags with apples are filled with carbon dioxide, followed by sealing the hole. For carbonation, you can use siphons.
In the refrigerator, apples are also stored for a long time, subject to certain storage rules:
- The most important thing is to store the fruit in an unwashed form.
- After harvest, apples should be placed in the refrigerator as soon as possible, but no later than 24 hours after harvest.
- You can pack the apples in bags, but do not forget about the holes, otherwise, the apples will start to rot.
- Divide the fruits of the same variety into packages, mixing is highly not recommended.
- For longer storage, apples are processed at a temperature not higher than +32 degrees for 3 days. Such treatments remove ethylene from the fruit, which prevents long-term maintenance.
Where to put fruit for storage
Before distributing the fruits into containers, do not forget about the important rule for sorting the size and varieties: large, small and medium apples must be distributed separately. This is due to the fact that large apples contribute to the accelerated ripening of smaller fruits, especially if the fruits are nearby for a long time.
It is best to store apples at home in the following places and containers:
- It is especially convenient when the design implies drawers for easy inspection and retrieval of fruits for consumption. Arrange the apples in one row, use cardboard, or wrap each one in a newsprint to prevent the fruit from touching. To prevent fruit contact – sprinkle apples with dry sawdust, sand, seed husks, or shavings.
- Boxes (wooden) are the most popular container for storing apples. If there are several drawers, do not fill them to the top, so that when stacking on top of each other, do not crush the lower ones.
- Boxes (cardboard).
If you still have unnecessary cardboard boxes, they can also be useful for storing apples in them. But before filling, be sure to fasten the walls with adhesive tape for greater strength.