Choosing fruit that will actually keep

Not every apple is built for long storage, and the single biggest factor in how well your harvest lasts is the variety you planted. Early croppers such as Discovery and Beauty of Bath are lovely in September but will be well past their best by Bonfire Night. Mid-season apples like Cox's Orange Pippin might hold for six or eight weeks in good conditions. It is the late-ripening, thick-skinned, hard-fleshed sorts that carry you through to March: Bramley, Egremont Russet, Ashmead's Kernel, Annie Elizabeth, Newton Wonder, Winston and D'Arcy Spice are all reliable keepers.

Pears are trickier still. Conference and Beurré Hardy will store reasonably well, Comice will not, and the old culinary pear Catillac can hang on for months if you treat it kindly.

If you inherited a mystery tree and are not sure what you have, do a simple test. Cut a fruit open in early October. If the pips are dark brown and the flesh is firm and crisp rather than soft and grainy, you have a keeper. If the pips are still pale, the fruit is immature and will shrivel rather than ripen properly.

Picking and sorting: the first 48 hours matter

Harvest on a dry day, ideally after a spell of settled weather. Wet fruit going into store is an invitation to mould. Handle every apple as though it were an egg — a bruised apple releases ethylene gas, which speeds up ripening in everything around it.

Always keep the stalk intact and never pull fruit from the tree; cup it in your palm and lift with a gentle twist. Windfalls and fruit with cuts, scabs, maggot holes or brown patches go straight into the kitchen for eating, cooking, chutney or juice. They will not keep, and one rotting apple really can spoil the whole box.

Sort as you pick into three piles:

• Perfect keepers — unblemished, stalk intact, firm, with the natural bloom still on the skin.
• Eat now — slightly bruised, small scabs, odd shapes.
• Process — damaged, bird-pecked or split, destined for the pan or the juicer within a day or two.

Do not wash fruit destined for storage. The waxy bloom and the natural yeasts on the skin help protect it. If a fruit is grubby, wipe it with a dry cloth.

Wrapping and packing your fruit

Traditional newspaper wrapping is still hard to beat. A single sheet of broadsheet will do two or three apples. Sit the fruit in the middle, bring the corners up and twist gently so the apple is snug but not crushed. The paper does three jobs: it stops fruit touching fruit, it slows moisture loss, and if one does go off, the rot is contained rather than spreading through the box.

Pack wrapped fruit into clean, dry boxes, wooden trays or slatted crates — cardboard is fine for a single season but goes soft in damp sheds. Do not stack more than two or three layers deep, and place the largest, heaviest fruit at the bottom. Label each box with the variety and the date, because by January you will have forgotten which was which.

If you have nowhere to wrap, a single layer of fruit on slatted shelves or clean straw works well too, as long as nothing is touching.

Finding the right conditions

Apples want cold, dark and slightly humid. Aim for a steady 2–5°C, with humidity around 85–90 per cent. A frost-free garage, a north-facing shed, an unheated spare room or a proper cellar all fit the bill. Frost is the enemy of stored apples — once the flesh freezes, the cells rupture and the fruit turns to brown mush.

Keep your store away from strong smells and from other crops. Potatoes give off moisture and will set apples rotting; onions and cabbage will taint the flavour. Never store apples and pears in the same box, as pears ripen faster and release more ethylene.

Airflow matters as much as temperature. A slightly draughty, ventilated space is better than a sealed bin, which traps damp air and encourages mould.

Pears need a different approach

Pears are picked earlier than apples — when the fruit lifts away from the spur with a gentle twist, but before it softens on the tree. Ripening on the tree gives you a gritty, mealy pear, so pick firm and let them finish indoors.

Store pears slightly cooler than apples where you can, around 0–2°C, and check them more often. Most will need a week or two at room temperature before eating, and a few varieties genuinely need a spell of cold to ripen sweetly. Bring them out in small batches rather than the whole box at once.

Checking, troubleshooting and using the crop

Go through your store every two to three weeks. Remove anything soft, wrinkled, mouldy or suspicious, and check the wrapping paper for damp patches. Fruit softens first around the stalk and the calyx, so feel those areas. Early varieties will start to go first — use them first.

A few final tips:

• Bring fruit out of storage into the warm an hour before eating; flavour improves enormously.
• Shrivelled apples are perfectly good for cooking — stewing, pies and chutney all hide a wrinkly skin.
• Windfalls and soft fruit freeze beautifully as purée or slices, so nothing is wasted.
• Keep an eye on the weather: if a hard frost is forecast before your late apples are ready, pick them and let them ripen indoors.

Get the basics right — sound fruit, clean hands, individual wrapping and a cold, dark corner — and a decent crop of Bramleys or Egremont Russets will still be crisp and fragrant when the seed catalogues start arriving.