Orchard People

[00:00:00] Halloween Traditions and Modern Celebrations
It's the 31st of October. The harvest season is coming to an end. The dark cold winter is on its way, and according to ancient Celtic traditions. At this time of year, the dead return to the world as ghosts.
To protect their homes, the ancient Celts put food and wine at their doorstops to stop the hungry spirits from haunting their homes and raiding their pantries. And of course, they wore masks to trick the ghosts into thinking that they too are members of the undead. Two thousand years later, we still celebrate Halloween.
And you know what? The costumes are now probably from Walmart. Instead of food at our doorsteps, we give out candy produced by multinational corporations. And what about bobbing for apples? Does anybody do that anymore? if they do, lots of families would choose Honeycrisp apples for their apple bobbing fun.
[00:01:10] Challenges of Growing Honeycrisp Apples
Honeycrisp is a very popular cultivar and often more expensive than other common apples. Why? that's because Honeycrisp apples are actually quite difficult to grow, and they can be even harder to store after harvest. So that's what we're going to talk about on this Halloween show today. My guest on the show is Dr. Randy Beaudry, a professor at Michigan State University and an expert in developing storage protocols for apples. He's also a specialist in Honeycrisp. But before we dive into the show, I would love to hear your experiences. Do you grow Honeycrisp apples? Have you had challenges growing them or storing them?
Do you find them easy to grow? And what are your secrets for storing all your homegrown apples, whether they're Honeycrisp or another cultivar? / In the meantime, let's talk about apple storage and the challenges of growing honey crisp apples.
[00:02:12] Expert Insights with Dr. Randy Beaudry
Dr. Randy Beaudry is on the line. Randy, thank you for coming on the show today. Ah, Susan, it's my pleasure. Happy Halloween. What are you doing for Halloween? mostly I'm going to be feeding some ghost goblins, witches, a few pumpkins, and maybe the occasional apple.
Okay, and are you going to dress up, perhaps, as a Honeycrisp Apple tonight? the very first costume that I ever wore was an apple with a worm in it. So my arms were in green socks as a worm and the rest of me was an apple. I'm not planning on putting on anything tonight. Now that's very interesting.
And how old were you at the time that you wore the apple costume? I was in college. Okay. Okay. That makes sense now. So let's, talk briefly about Honeycrisp apples. They really have become very popular, haven't they? In recent years. Yeah, they have. Honeycrisp Apple is one of the most rapidly growing apples, I guess I would say.
In terms of the number of acres being planted, in the United States, and it's beginning to become a bit of a worldwide phenomenon. I know that, from my perspective, working with, home orchardists, community orchardists, arborists, and Honeycrisp is Probably the go to apple tree to buy and plant because you know that your client or your community is going to love the apples.
The problem is I know that people have faced very big challenges with honeycrisp. Why is it so hard to grow? it's almost as if a honeycrisp wanted to tease us with this fruit, you know The fruit variety is difficult to grow. It goes through seasons where it produces an abundance of fruit So an overabundance of fruit And then the next year it may have no fruit or very few fruit and so as a result, the fruit that remain on the tree gets very large and they have these Disorders that are common for very large fruit, and then the next year you might have very small fruit, and when you have lots of small fruit, they don't ripen normally, so they might be later to ripen, or not ripen properly at all, so it's a peculiar tree in that regard, and just difficult to grow overall, so it has a tendency to stop growing on you, so once it starts to produce fruit, Just says, Okay, that's enough.
I'm not going to get any larger. And then it just produces the fruit. It doesn't change in size. And so for our commercial growers, that's a big issue. They need to have it fill the space, but it intercepts enough light and fruit so that they can make her, profit. They're a business after all. Wow, yeah, that makes sense.
[00:04:44] Common Disorders in Honeycrisp Apples
And even for, so even for home growers or community growers or small orchardists, you talked about the disorders that larger fruit get, what are those disorders? What kind of things will we see with honeycrisp apples? Yeah, so it's got a few. the, biggest problem is one called bitter pit. And this is some little brown spots that occur, kind of small pits, I guess you could say.
And if you, on the, Usually on the base of the fruit near the calyx end. So they, look at this, or the professionals who have evaluated this, scientists and others, think of this as a calcium related disorder. But, if you look into the science, it actually turns out that the, they call it a calcium deficiency, but the concentration of calcium is actually higher in the pit.
then the surrounding tissues and so it's basically an upset in the metabolism of the fruit and despite the fact that we've been researching this for well over 100 years. Nobody knows what causes it. It's just related to calcium and I think we just about leave it at that. But yeah, large fruit, for some reason, they have a tendency to develop this disorder and while it may look off putting, doesn't really affect the flavor.
The pits are not really bitter, so it's okay, but it's just, unsightly. Interesting. yeah, bitter pit. So you wouldn't really, whether you're growing at home, whether you're growing, in an orchard, it's not something that's very desirable, but especially if you want to store the fruit, how does that make things different?
Yeah, if you try to store a fruit that has bitter pit, because that Tissue has died, like I say, these are little brown pits that occur, so if a tissue has died, so now it's susceptible to decay organisms. So then the next phase of, degeneration or degradation takes place. And so you go from small pits that are on the base of the fruit, now to the development of decay, and so that really does spoil the fruit.
Yeah, for long term storage, bitter pit is definitely a no and anything that has pit on it, or bitter pit on it, is usually thrown out. if we don't throw it out in the orchard, I've seen orchards where 50%, 60 percent of the fruit are just left on the ground because they have bitter pit.
if those fruit are going to go into storage, they don't want to have any pit, in storage. they try to select for them at harvest time. And then when they come out of storage, if more, bitter pit is formed, then those fruit are also culled out and thrown away. Yeah, we've developed, in commercial orchards, we've developed very complicated machinery that actually looks into the fruit.
As well as at the surface of the fruit determines whether or not these defects exist, but bitter pit is one of the biggest Disorder for honeycrisp and we haven't talked about sunscald, but that's another one for those large fruits well for bitter pit so for bitter pit like as I can picture it inside my head and You don't necessarily know until you slice open the apple.
Is that not the case? Yeah in some cases You're exactly right, Susan. So what happens is, you'll have some bitter bit forming on the inside of the fruit. And it usually forms about an eighth of an inch to maybe as much as a quarter of an inch inside the fruit. And you can see small depressions on the surface, but it doesn't look, like a disorder or disease.
But when you cut the fruit, you'll begin to see those marks. And if you're going to put that into a pie, for instance, or, serve it up as a slice. Definitely unsightly. Interesting.
[00:08:26] Best Practices for Storing Apples
And the other question is, if, for instance, a couple of apples slip into the bunch in storage, whether you're storing in your basement or in professional storage, will it spread to the other fruit?
Yeah, this is a question asked, believe it or not, by scientists over a hundred years ago. And the tests were done. And yeah, no, it does not spread from one fruit to another. It's simply a disorder that's predestined, so to speak, to occur on an apple fruit. So at the time of harvest, if you let that fruit go to ripening, it either will or will not develop bitter pit, but it's not affected.
Okay, that's good. Now, you mentioned Sunscald. I want to talk about that as well. I just, we got an email from a listener, Chris. I'm not sure where Chris is emailing from. He says, Hi, Susan. Very interesting show. This is apple season. And this indeed is apple season. Thank you, Chris, for that email. yeah. So the Sunscald, correct?
That's correct. Yeah. And, the old fashioned apple trees, if you can find an orchard that has old fashioned apple trees, treasure it and take pictures because they're disappearing. But those old trees with a large central trunk and a big umbrella kind of shape to the tree. rapidly disappearing and being replaced by what we call, fruiting walls.
and this is really driven in part by Honeycrisp itself because of the high value, but basically planes of fruit in the orchard that we grow the fruit on. So they grow apple trees now on trellis wire, much like a grape. And because of that, there's much more exposure of the fruit to the sun. So if you can think of an espalier tree that you might put on the side of your house, you think how much sun that tree gets.
the old days, all of that canopy would shade the fruit and you wouldn't get sunburn, but on the modern, production systems and then modern varieties like Honeycrisp, yeah, the two things together, the sensitive variety that the Honeycrisp is and then the greater exposure to sunlight that we get in modern production canopies, yeah, we get a lot more Disorders like sun scald.
So it's partly high temperature, and it's partly high sunlight, so ultraviolet rays, that sort of thing. And that would affect the trunk of the tree, causing wounds, or would it actually affect the fruit? No, it causes huge brown spots on the fruit surface, actually, so that it can be debilitating, and you don't necessarily see it at harvest.
At harvest, you might look at a fruit, and if you look at it closely, you'll see a slight off color. On the exposed red side of the fruit, but you put it in the storage and pull it out months later, and you've got a large dead area on the surface of the Honeycrisp fruit. Honeycrisp is extremely sensitive to very high light, and it's one of the difficulties they have with growing this variety in high light areas like, western United States.
So it's definitely a Midwest variety. It is a Midwest, that's what I was going to ask. What is the best location if you do want, if you're desperate to grow Honeycrisp, how do you hedge your bets? Like where are the better places in North America to grow it? I would say a climate like ours, a temperate climate, you can get very high quality out west, for sure.
but they have to use measures like coating the fruit with, certain, a clay type materials. it's called kaolinite clay. Anyway, so you can do things to allow your, to grow the fruit in those kind of, more challenging climates, I guess I would say. But if I were to grow Honeycrisp, the best places to grow it, northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, northern Michigan, In the northern tier states, Nova Scotia, Maine, Northern New York.
Yeah, those cooler areas. What happens is, Honeycrisp is an early ripening variety for us, so it's like mid September. that's after some of the very early varieties, but among the high quality varieties, that's early, but in mid September, we still don't have the cool nights to get the good temper, the good coloration, but in those higher, latitude places, then we find that they don't ripen until the end of September, so about, first of October, and in those areas, they get the highlights, And then the cool nights as well, and those cool nights trigger the formation of the anthocyanins to give you a beautiful red fruit.
so that's where I would say are probably the best areas to grow Honeycrisp in the U. S. I might get flack from my colleagues in the experiment stations around the U. S., but, but that Based on the quality of the fruit, that's what I would say. interesting.
[00:13:08] Listener Questions and Expert Answers: Shiny Apples
We got an email from John. Not sure, oh, John is in Ontario, actually.
So he writes something interesting, and I wonder if you know this particular cultivar. He says, Hi Susan, the Heritage Apple Winter Banana, the Winter Banana Apple, is a variety that keeps very well. We often pick ours in late November. And have been able to keep them in the refrigerator crisper until late February.
Something to be said about heritage varieties. That's interesting. Have you heard of the winter banana apple? I know it's one of the more quirky, heirloom cultivars. Is that something you've encountered at all? I'm not, I'm familiar with the winter banana, but mostly through little literature, but not, I don't think I've ever tasted it.
I know, I would love to taste it. John, if you hear our question, tell us, email us back and tell us if it actually tastes like banana. Susan, I do a lot of work on aromabiology in apples, and so far I've never found an apple that makes the characteristic banana flavor, so this would be very interesting.
That would be super interesting. We've got another question from Brian. Hi, listening from Reno, Nevada. What are apples Coated with in the supermarkets. Thank you. I have always wondered that. Thank you, Brian, for asking that question. Do you know the answer? Is this part of the magic? We're going to talk in the second part of the show about the magic you do to keep the apples, but is coating them part of the issue?
Yeah, it is. It's not part of the issue, but it's part of what we do here in the United States, and it's interesting. Different places in the world manage their apples differently. The United States, for whatever reason, has, Focused on been come fascinated by shiny apples. Don't know how that happened.
Maybe through Disney. I don't know. But what's happened is we expect apples to be shiny. Apples are normally dull, actually, until you shine them, so you can take an apple fruit, they produce their own waxes. And if you rub them on your pat leg or your shirt sleeve, you can get them to a very nice high polish.
the consumer doesn't really know to do that, I think, anymore. And so what has happened is, the producers of the apples have stepped in and then they use certain waxes or two different waxes that are primarily used. And these waxes give that sheen to the apple without having to buff it. So they do all of that in the packing line.
And then you see a bright, shiny apple in the grocery store. So these, waxes though, like what, are they made out of? Is this like an edible, natural Oh, you're going to put me in a corner here. Yeah. Yeah, okay. here it goes. This is what they're made of. So one is a wax, actually. It comes from a palm tree.
It's our carno, carnauba wax it's called. So we take the wax off a palm tree. And it's a better wax, I guess you would say. A more stable wax. And we, strip the waxes off of the apple, then we put this carnauba wax on, and that carnauba wax is a nice, shiny Wax and it doesn't dull and then the other material that we put on is shellac.
Believe it or not. Oh my gosh This is between us and the listeners so the listeners will all keep it quiet right listeners are we going to say anything? Okay, so tell us about the shellac. I'm your Apple expert today. So yeah, so this is a It's an excretion of this insect called the lac bug. Believe it or not.
And this is a huge industry in India and other places, but in India as well. And primarily. And so what they do is they go through the shrubs that the lac bug is on. And it's Oh, it's a scale insect, I believe. And then they collect the white exudate, which is a wax that The bug makes and then they take that wax and it's reduced and made into a wax that they put on fruit and other things.
yeah, shellac. All that, it's amazing isn't it? All that work and it sounds like it's not, that has, plays no role in preserving the fruit. It's just to satisfy our shiny apple craving, Some people will claim, no, it's a, fair point to make. Some people will claim that it reduces moisture loss and it might do a little bit.
might modify the atmosphere inside the food a little bit. I really doubt it. but yeah, most it's about keeping it shiny, especially in a situation where an apple fruit goes from like a cool environment to a slightly warmer environment to a cooler environment. And so where you normally would have condensation, the causing off color of the waxes, those waxes are pretty stable and they don't, they don't develop like a dullness.
and do you do, if you wash them with soap, will the wax come off? Because I doubt it somehow. you're exactly right, yeah. We're eating that stuff. But they're inert, they're very inert materials, very stable so they're not a risk of any sort so far as I know to any kind of in any way for human health.
And if you don't want the wax, then grow your own fruit tree. And that's why people are listening to this radio show and they go to my website.
let's see, we've got also a message here from Hank, and Hank is talking about Honeycrisp and storing them, and he says, they store very well for me in our root cellar. He said, We ate them into the spring last year. They keep what flavor they do have for a long while and stay crunchy long after the flavors decline.
Okay, so the flavor does decline. The last few were a bit like eating celery, which is nice enough when the garden is still covered in snow. So he says, not the best flavored apple, but certainly a good keeper. That's his perspective.
[00:18:53] Innovations in Apple Storage
but that's an interesting point, actually, Randy, because what we're going to talk about in the second part of the show is how you've managed to keep the apples and the flavor.
Is that correct? That's the whole point of learning to, finding ways to store these apples, that they won't change. In storage. Yeah, you have it. Exactly. yeah, Honeycrisp is an interesting apple for that particular reason. Yeah, it's insensitive to temperature in terms of softening. It always remains crisp.
It's, as far as I know, the only commercial apple produced now or ever that has had this texture. It's very, unusual. it never Ever softens. It eventually will get mealy. that's an issue with almost every apple variety when they get very old. but in this case, the Honeycrisp will stay crispy even at the higher temperatures of a root cellar.
So 50 degrees, Fahrenheit. Yeah. Interesting. We'll do one more message here. This is, from Ben, from Southern Virginia. Hey, so Ben says If I ever got any to store, I might have some tips. I planted two honeycrisp trees three years ago before I knew any better. They hate the heat in southern Virginia Zone 7A.
Any apples they produce quickly perish slash never come to fruition. I've been grafting them over with southern varieties, but it's still one of the apples. But, he says, it's still one of the apples that got me interested in growing my own, so I owe them something. And then he says, By the way, I do no spray and no treatments of any kind on them.
They get Garrett juice and Epsom salts monthly and that's it. When I got this email, I looked up Garrett juice. G A R E T, Garrett juice. Is that something you've heard of or is that No, I don't know about it. Yeah, so it's an interesting organic, mixture and you get the recipe online. So people may want to look that up.
So that's interesting. That's from Ben.
Now, you've been faced with the problem of figuring out how to actually store these apples properly. Can you tell me a little bit, what is the problem with storage and what is the solution that you found? Sure, Honeycrisp apples has, apple variety has more problems than I think any other variety I've ever worked with.
my career only goes back 27 years, but at the same time, I've worked with a number of varieties and nothing quite meets the standards set by Honeycrisp. they have a temperature sensitivity. So at low temperatures that we normally would store apples, so about zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it's absolute death for a honeycrisp apple.
So that would cause that fruit to develop lesions on the surface that look like ribbons, rivers of brown. On the surface, it's a disorder called super, super fit. I'm not sorry. A soft scald or ribbons called and then it may also cause an internal breakdown called soggy breakdown. So this rivers of brown on the inside of the fruit and one does not necessarily happen with the other.
You might have fruit that look absolutely perfect on the outside and cut into that fruit and it's brown on the inside. And, and edible. So that's a chilling related disorder that is common for Honeycrisp. And a couple other varieties are sensitive to low temperatures, like McIntosh and Jonathan, but nothing like Honeycrisp.
So Okay, so your job, developing these storage protocols is to say, okay, here's the harvest. I want this harvest to stay good for how many months? Like how many months realistically can you keep these apples for whether it's honey crisp or McIntosh or another cultivar? Yeah, every apple variety has its own kind of optimum, a honey crisp apple we could keep for about, I would say eight months, probably if we do everything right.
when we first started storing Honeycrisp, probably no more than three or four months would be the outside in my mind. but we're better at it now. but every variety is different, so McIntosh, I, personally wouldn't like to see a McIntosh stored longer than, say, four to six months, depending on how good you were at, that point.
activity. something like a red delicious eight to nine months. No problem. A Rome or some other variety, like a Fuji could store a year if you really worked at it. So some variety store a long time, probably your winter banana. You could keep all year. If you put, all the tools.
It's interesting you say that about winter banana, and John got back to us, so you and I will now know a little bit more. I was hoping he'd write back. So John says, no, there is no banana flavor in these apples, in the winter banana. That's what you thought. Literature indicates a banana aroma, but John says, I can't detect it.
Our tree is very old. probably 80 plus years and is a great producer. We never spray and it is very clean with little scab and insect issues. John. Thank you, John, so much for writing that. Okay, so we know it's a good keeper. We know it doesn't taste like bananas. that's good. Okay, so you're saying that there's a limit as to how many months you can keep an apple, depending on the apple.
Now, I'm guessing that if you keep an apple too long, it turns to mush. Or does each one have a different problem? Yeah, that's true. So it'll either turn to mush or turn brown, or you'll have decay set in, or the flavor is lost, as was indicated earlier. So there are a number of different ways for the fruit to lose enough quality that you no longer consider it acceptable.
yeah, lots of ways to take the apple apart. Lots of ways. Okay. But your job is to figure out how to keep it good. So what is involved? Is it just you build big refrigerators and pop them in there? Is that how simple the job is? No, it's a little more complicated than that.
[00:25:00] Steps to Harvesting and Storing Apples
but I can I, would you like me to go through and describe what Yes, in simple terms, what are the steps?
Yeah. So the first step is to harvest the fruit at the right stage of development. So if I harvest a fruit that's too ripe, it won't store well. It might taste great for the first few weeks, but after a while you'll soon see that it gets tired, loses some of the acid, some of the punch to the flavor, and, eventually the aromas begin to change and you get that overripe.
taste and maybe greasiness associated with the skin. in this particular case, I say the first step is to harvest them at the right stage. So before you begin to have a strong scent of, a strong aroma that's typical of the variety. So by that time, they've begun to ripen. So if you catch them just before that stage, they're at their maximum storability.
They may not look pretty, necessarily, but they'll eat well in storage.
[00:25:55] Temperature Control for Apple Storage
And then the next thing is to store them at the right temperature. So for Honeycrisp, we actually, believe it or not, we take these millions of tons of Honeycrisp fruit, and they all get held at a higher temperature, in this case about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, for five to seven days, and then we reduce the temperature, not down to zero or 32 Fahrenheit, we reduce it down to about 38 Fahrenheit.
And then we can store them for some extended period of time. But we do this conditioning to prevent them from becoming too sensitive to low temperatures. So that's an amazing step. You think about all of that energy and time expended to keep this fruit well. So temperature is the next thing.
[00:26:35] Preventing Apple Ripening with Ethylene Management
And then we also have a couple of really cool tools to prevent ripening.
There's a hormone that apples produce. It's a natural, simple hormone. It's called ethylene. Ethylene gas drives ripening in apple fruits. Without ethylene They will not ripen. It's just as simple as that. So we have two tools that we typically use. One is to reduce the oxygen around the fruit. Low oxygen prevents ethylene action.
And so then the fruit don't ripen very rapidly. And we can hold them for months before they begin to ripen. And then we have special rooms to apply this atmosphere. Those are called controlled atmosphere storages. And these are very large cold rooms. There are thousands of bushels in these rooms, but on the other end there can be a few hundred bushels, so there are some small ones out there too.
[00:27:25] Innovative Storage Techniques and Tools
And then the final tool, a very exciting tool that has been developed in the last 15 or so years, is a chemical compound. It's a four carbon molecule, a lot like butane, like the butane in a lighter. It's called 1 MCP, 1 methylcyclopropene. And this compound binds to the binding site in the apple, where the ethylene normally acts.
And so now the ethylene can't act. And so for a period of months, this, 1 MCP At vanishingly low levels, like parts per billion or parts per trillion, blocks out the ethylene action, and then slowly the fruit makes new binding sites, and then it becomes sensitive to ethylene again and begins to ripen.
after three or four months, even in air storage, without the controlled atmosphere, the fruit, will hold pretty well, and then they begin to ripen normally. And in controlled atmosphere storage, if you treat them with MCP, it would be seven or eight months, maybe, before the fruit begin to ripen again on their own.
it's a benefit and a bane, too. We can talk about the negative aspects of it, but boy, we can hold a fruit at maximum crunchiness for a very long period of time. Amazing. Those three steps, right? Those are the three steps. Yeah. Step number one, harvest at the right time. That makes sense. there's no chemicals involved here.
It's all good. Temperature, that's like you have special rooms and you keep them a certain temperature. That was step two. Now step three, so you talk about reducing oxygen. So there's no chemical involved in reducing oxygen. Yeah, it's just simple respiratory gas. You and I breathe it in and breathe it out.
Yeah. And breathe out CO2, yeah.
[00:29:08] Addressing Organic Concerns and Additional Storage Tips
so of the third step, controlling the atmosphere, this, what is it, 1 MCP, is that, is there anything chemical about that? Is that something that people might say, oh, that's not organic, or what is this putting in our food? So your organic people wouldn't want to use it.
Okay. but it's an interesting chemical because, It is extremely safe, so I don't know if you're familiar with the way tests are done, but they could never cause any symptomology of the, in this case it was, the surrogate is a rat. They could never cause any symptomology of the rat, no matter how high the concentration was.
So it appears to be extremely safe, but it is a chemical and it's not organic. there have been reports of it being found in things like wood smoke, but I'm not so sure how Realistic, that is. But, yep, so not organic. One thing I didn't mention is that carbon dioxide is also used. So the gas that we exhale, CO2, carbon dioxide, also helps preserve the fruit, believe it or not.
But in the case of Honeycrisp, sadly, Honeycrisp is very sensitive to this. Simple respiratory gas, and it can cause browning on the inside of that fruit as well. So your job has been to walk a tightrope and to create some sort of system for Honeycrisp, where this sensitive, apple will survive and thrive and still be yummy and delicious at the end of the eight months or six months.
So what does that involve? Do you sit at your drawing board and create designs for rooms that can have just the right number of The right temperature, the right gases. How does that look for you? Yeah, so we don't do it quite like that, but what we do is we take those fruit that we harvest from our commercial, cooperators and we put them in storages that we have in my laboratory.
So I have these storage cabinets, about 32 storage cabinets, and we can modify the atmosphere in those cabinets. to whatever we desire. And then we attempt to, maximize the storage, quality of the apple fruit, using various protocols, both.
[00:31:16] Developing Storage Recipes for Different Growers
Before they go into storage and then as they're in the storage, so using chemicals like one MCP, but also not using chemicals and so as it turns out it depends on what you want just about you can find what you need So there's been a recent invention and this is not something for folks at home necessarily, but there's been a recent invention called as well, it's called DCA, Dynamic Controlled Atmosphere.
And it's based on some work that was done in my laboratory and others many years ago, but there are ways of determining whether the fruit is stressed by those low, oxygen atmospheres. And so what we've done now with equipment that we have, we can get oxygen levels lower than ever before. And then we can reduce the ripening of the fruit.
So this allows us to avoid the use of one MCP in some situations. So that what we do in my lab is we come up with recipes. So recipes for the organic grower recipes. Typically a large commercial grower, but recipes for the organic grower, recipes for those people who don't want to use controlled atmosphere and just want to use, let's say, MCP, recipes for those who like to use, CA and might be comfortable with using an antioxidant, prevent some disorders.
So that kind of thing. So we have about eight or. 10 different variants of recipes that we recommend for our grower community. I like that. I like calling it recipes. It sounds much less scary than protocols. That sounds good to me.
[00:32:45] Listener Questions: Apple Varieties and Storage
Now we have an email from Adam in Grand Rapids. It's, Michigan, I think.
Now, Adam says, hi, two questions. Are there different strains of Honeycrisp or other apples that have differing susceptibility to bitter pit? That's an interesting question. I wondered about different strains or varieties of, Honeycrisp. His second question is, what are some of the better storing early apples?
One book I have suggests Sansa, S A N S A, a variety introduced in 1986. So let's see, part one is, are there different types of Honeycrisp? The answer to that question is yes. Ah. Yeah, so it turns out that there are some very new, Honeycrisp strains. they ripen about, believe it or not, about three weeks earlier than Honeycrisp.
yeah, so it's, in a way, it's a little bit frightening. I haven't had a chance to store them, but I feel Like, gosh, to take a fruit variety that grows quickly and grows quite large already, and then to find a strain, that grows even more rapidly, I just wonder what that means in terms of retention of the texture that we really like.
Honeycrisp is known for its texture that doesn't go away. And, yeah, so I haven't, had enough experience, but I have some concerns, but not, nothing. Nothing that would prevent me from buying some and eating them. Definitely. yep, that's about it though. They have some early ripening variants and some, bright red color variants.
Bright red ones. So your grower or your consumers out there would, should expect to see even more brightly colored plants. Honeycrisp in the future. we'll look out for those. And earlier in the season. And so Adam's second question is, from your knowledge, what are some of the better storing early apples?
So he talks about Sansa, S A N S A, but I don't know if there's other cultivars that you know of. Yeah, so of the early varieties, gosh, I want to say earlier than, if you go earlier than Honeycrisp, you'd have the early Honeycrisp variety, and then there's another one called Sweet Tango. that is an amazing apple, actually.
it probably is my favorite apple. So it's a, variety that, like Honeycrisp, came out of the Minnesota breeding program. it's a beautiful apple. it's the only apple I've ever heard a grower described as looking like money on the tree. So that, it's a difficult apple to grow. Once again, another difficult apple to grow because it has, superficial, issues.
So large lenticels and sometimes it gets russet. But. But the flavor of it is amazing. in terms of the very earliest high quality fruit, probably that, the Paula Red, which is good for a week. but still is one of our early high quality fruits. And then you fall into the era, the zone where Honeycrisp, McIntosh, Jonathan, come.
Mac, yeah, Honeycrisp, McIntosh, Jonathan, yeah, probably come all, more or less together. Gala would be there as well. So there are early ripening strains of Gala. Yeah, they're not as early as, let's say, the Sweet Tango, which is ripe in the last week of August. Interesting. The you were talking about the early apples and I know that's not a keeper, but there's Yellow Transparent, which is a really early apple.
I love that. I love it. What it does is it prepares me for the, fall. Yeah, so on a, on a biking trip, through let's say the pretty parts of Michigan, you can stop at some local farm stand. They've just opened. They have the Transparent out there and you can get a taste of fall early on. Yeah, but I understand that they turn they get they don't keep very well at all.
That's correct. Yeah, nobody stores them. You want to applesauce them pretty quickly. I've got an email from Janice, and / Janice writes, now let's see where she is. Oh, she says, listening from Wilmington, Delaware. Have you ever heard of a variety of apple called, Macoun?
I don't know if I've pronounced that I've seen it. Oh, Macoun. Macoun. Yeah. It seems that this variety is rare. We can't buy them here. Thank you. So Macoun, did I pronounce that correctly this time? Macoun. Yeah, I think that's right. So tell us about it. Do you know about that? I know about it only a little.
It's a variety that you can still find in some heritage orchards. So occasionally you'll find it. my best memory of the Macoun apple is having a cider made from that apple and only that apple. It was the best apple cider I'd ever had. There's something to be said about an apple cider that's made from a single variety.
You can taste the variety coming through. But it's one of those varieties, the old Macoun, that has gone by the wayside for issues associated with storability and handling. some varieties of apples, we can make it, we can get them through the handling chain and sell them for an extended period of time and the grocery stores want them and others that will fade away because they lack some specific quality characteristic.
And maybe the best example I have of that is the Cortland apple. That's an interesting apple too. That ripens about the time of Red Delicious, maybe a little earlier. And it's got a beautiful white flesh. It doesn't brown, and it's a beautiful apple, and it's good, when you eat it, and it's one of those nice, tasty fall apples, lots of flavor, but it softens quite quickly, and, so as a result, it's rarely held for any length of time, and so if you try to get that through a retail outlet, you'll have it in the fall, but that's about it.
Retailers, especially these big box stores, they like to have, an apple variety throughout their marketing season. And, yeah, so it's moved on its way out, just a little too soft, maybe a little too large, and a couple, and a little bit too many, too much susceptibility to some post harvest issues.
the next few years, you'll be hard pressed to find the Cortland, and that's still findable, but like the, Macoun, it'll fade. And that's where home growers and community growers and small orchardists can come in because we can grow these really interesting cultivars because we don't have to worry about storing them for months and months.
So I would say, plant the tree, Janice, if you can. on my website, orchardpeople. com, you can do, you can go to the menu bar where it says books and I have a list of specialist fruit tree nurseries. And so you can get a tree, you download the list and you can get a tree shipped to you.
And I'm sure I've seen Macoun on there. yeah, and then email us back and tell us how the fruit is. We want to know. yes.
[00:39:38] Home Storage Solutions for Apples
/We're going to talk about creative solutions that home growers and others can use to store their harvest.
Can we create an inexpensive solution to turn an ordinary garage, for instance, into somewhere to store your homegrown apples?
So we're going to talk about how to adapt a professional fruit storage system that it could so that it could work in your own garage or your basement or in an outdoor structure. So Randy, you're talking about the solutions that you develop are very expensive and high tech and they're for big producers.
But what if we go back in time? How helpful is it to just have a cold cellar or, what would you suggest to create a really good storage solution for a small grower? that's an interesting question. There are a couple of options and I think, maybe the thing you want to think about is starting with the right Plant material for putting in your cool storage.
So I won't call it a cold storage. We'll call it a cool storage. So cellars Cold cellars can well, they typically be are at earth temperature, which is about 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit But with ventilation can be made cooler So if I were to work with an apple variety like that I would try to store it in the coolest part of my cold cellar or If you looked at it as like a corner of your garage the warmest part of your unheated garage So they wouldn't freeze apples, actually, because they're alive, they produce their own heat.
So a little bit of insulation around the fruit will allow temperatures to build up and vice versa. If you have an area that's already warm, like a root cellar warm in an apple talk a little bit of ventilation or near the ventilated area. so anything you can to get the temperature as low as possible would be critical for the home grower, the home store, The other thing would be to use varieties that store extremely well. depending on where you're growing your fruit, if you're up north, you don't have too many options. A lot of the, early ripening fruit or what would be mid season ripening fruit that are grown in the northern tier of states.
They don't store exceedingly long and the one exception to that is the Honeycrisp that we've been talking about because it never really softens. But if you're fortunate enough to live in, let's say, Ohio or perhaps even southern Michigan, there are a number of varieties that store exceedingly well. If you can harvest them in the fall and will do quite well even at slightly elevated temperatures.
One of those is called Gold Rush. This came out of the Purdue breeding program and it's a scab resistant variety, so you don't have to control, the scab on the, which is a pre harvest, Fungal disease. So that variety doesn't, you might harvest it in mid October and it won't ripen for another three months, even in storage.
But when it ripens, it's just one of the most flavorful apples I've ever eaten. Extremely hard fruit. Another one coming out of the informal Ohio breeding program is called Evercrisp, and that is an exquisite apple. It's very sweet. Very crisp and it stays crunchy a long time in storage. So that's one that if you didn't have optimal storage conditions could be, could be held quite a long time.
Fuji Apple is another one that I would consider to be, really storable for a long period of time before it would, get too soft or, or get mealy. selection and then also whatever you can do to try to get the temperature as close to zero Celsius or 32 Fahrenheit, as you can for most of those varieties.
And when I say 32 for Honeycrisp once again. 38. Yeah, so essentially, okay, so you've got your cold cellar, you're gonna put, just check the temperature down there, but what if the room is a bit warm? can you adapt a room with an air conditioning unit? Can you, is there anything else you can do to, adapt your space so that it works?
Yeah, you can, There are options and I've actually worked on some of these options in a project in India recently. It's been fun. but yeah, you can take a regular air conditioner and air conditioners are, they have most of the control features on the inside of the air conditioner. So the air conditioner itself can never get lower temperatures than let's say 58 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's it. But, it turns out that every air conditioner Manages this by sensing the temperature of a little probe that sits there in the gas stream or the air stream of the air conditioner. And so if you took that little probe, okay, and it's on a little wire, and you pulled that probe, so you took apart the chassis, preferably while this thing was unplugged.
And you took apart the chassis and took that probe and put it outside of the air conditioner. Now the air conditioner thinks that it's always 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And it wants to reduce the temperature. So that's one way to make an air conditioner work for you that way. So what we do in our situation is we actually take a little heater.
You could use a light bulb if you wanted to. It doesn't matter what. But a little heater to warm up that sensor. and we, and that way the sensor stays in the room with the apples and the air conditioner and, we just heat it up a little bit. And so the air conditioner stays on and an air conditioner, believe it or not, can get well below freezing.
yeah, you could, do it that way if you wanted to. And then if you had a way of taking like an old thermostat, if Yeah. And, and set that thermostat for some low temperature that the thermostat will go to. I don't know, some of them, like for refrigerators, maybe those thermostats can be used to, turn on and off when you're freezing and just turn the light off.
so, when it gets down, the room gets down to a certain temperature, it just cuts off the electricity to the light. And then suddenly. then now that sensor for your air conditioner is seeing the low temperature, not the warmed temperature from the light. it's a lot of finagling, but yeah, you could hack something like that without too much trouble.
And it's just an old air conditioner that somebody might be throwing away on a street corner. And as long as you can pull out that temperature sensor and separate it from the air stream, that's coming through the air conditioner. Warm it or even cool it because a lot of these are heat pumps.
They'll work both ways Yeah, so then you can get lower temperatures and this is the source of cooling that we're using in India a little more sophisticated than that a few more bells and whistles. But yeah, what is actually a product on the market called It's called a CoolBot, about 300, and that does the same thing in a much more controlled fashion, but yeah, so you can take that device and put it on an old air conditioner and make it become a refrigerator.
Oh, interesting. Yeah, what about how you store in terms of, should you put your apples in plastic bags? Should you lay them out in boxes? Should they not be too close to each other? Are there any other tips that you can tell us? I think you're a better post harvest person than I am. This is a really good point.
Apple fruits, you think of them as being resistant to moisture loss, a little bit like a tomato fruit, let's say, but yeah, you give them a few weeks and they get a little bit wrinkly. There's almost no product that I know of that can stand more than about a 5 percent moisture loss. and apple fruits are no different.
some kind of a barrier is needed, to prevent the moisture loss. plastic bags are a very good idea. they can have relatively large holes in them. If you, seal up the plastic bag, you may run into problems with too low oxygen or too high carbon dioxide in that plastic environment. But, a plastic bag with some holes, poked in it, would keep most of the moisture inside and also keep the fruit in better shape.
I would suggest that. Some people will take fruit and they'll put them, in, let's say, a straw or hay. That tends to allow gas exchange, but also keep the moisture in it and prevents rotting and rotting from spreading from fruit to fruit. So there are, options like that, but the plastic bag is a good one.
Some kind of a barrier for moisture loss. And if we use a plastic bag, could we put 10 or 12 or 20 apples inside? They won't affect each other. They shouldn't do, but the one caveat is, if you've got one fruit that decides to decay, you can get some really beautiful molds growing from one fruit to the next.
they're stunning and they're wonderful to take a picture of, but you certainly wouldn't want to eat them. so if you were to do it in a perfect world, maybe you want to put a little bit of paper or something like wrap each individual apple. And believe it or not, apple fruits going into storage, at least the very, high value ones, were individually wrapped in years past.
They would wrap them in an oil wrap and it was for a different purpose as an antioxidant, but you would have a full storage with each individual apple wrapped in a piece of paper. So if a commercial growers could have done it back then. modern growers can do it, household growers can do it, too.
That's great. Yeah, a little bit of newspaper wrapped around the apple, but put them all in a plastic bag, and I think you'll find that they store pretty darn well. Oh, that's amazing. And you won't get that, what we call, nesting from, with decay going from one fruit to the next. yes.
[00:49:04] Wrapping Up: Final Tips and Farewell
/ we've got to wrap up the show just in a couple of minutes, I just also wanted to say to Anthony, who wrote from Baltimore, that I saw your email. Anthony was saying that the discussion has focused. previously on storage for commercial growers, but what about storage for small and home orchards? Storage in basements or in root cellars for those of us who have them?
So Anthony, I hope that we answered your question, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I feel like I've learned a lot. I'm sure that there's so much more to learn, but it's given me a good big picture of what happens to the fruit before we buy it in the supermarket.
Well, Susan, it's been my pleasure to be on, on the program. And, honestly, I respond directly to folks as well via my email, beaudry at msu dot edu. Feel free to send me a note, question, if I don't know. We have lots of extension personnel and other folks here at Michigan, in Michigan that can, Potentially or hopefully answer the question.
That's amazing. That's so helpful. thanks so much for coming on the show and goodbye for now. Alright, Susan, thank you so much. Okay, take care. That was Dr. Randy Beaudry, a professor at Michigan State University and an expert in developing storage protocols for apples, and I'm so happy he came on the show today.