I do not accept the premise that sugar in apples is unhealthy (what silly things we've broght ourselves to accept). That being said an unripe Golden Delicious is just plain bland, which is what you get at the store. The calories in the apple are still there no matter the sweetness, they are just in the form of starch, not sugar, and if you're going to have the calories they might as well be sweet ones.

Rest assured no one ever got fat from eating too many apples; the fiber content will assure that, and I actually have a diet book called the 3-apple-a-day-plan where many people have lost a ton of weight eating an apple before every meal to fill them up.

As to your first question, different apples taste best when picked at different times; you just have to find the right time for each apple.

Sugar content goes up...and flavor the longer they are on the tree.
I would think with added vitamins and minerals...they say a ripe fruit is
always best. If you're diabetic it might be a different story?

You be the judge when you want them to be picked.

But isn't it also true that many varieties of apples turn mealy if left too long on the tree? Applenut has so much experience with so many varieties, I think his statement that each apple has a "right" time to be picked is accurate, and it's not always true the longer the better, even if sugar does go up the longer they stay on. Unfortunately, unless you have a lot of apples on your tree(s) for trial and error, it is hard to test WHEN is the right time to pick for your variety in your growing zone.

Carla in Sac

If the apples are mealy then they are over ripe. When some apples start
to drop then they're usually ready for picking,... seeds are brown or
just starting to get brown. If you want to keep short keeper apple longer
then pick it earlier....when seeds are still white.

Konrad

This is my first year getting a fair number of apples and determining when to pick them has been very challenging. I have 3 trees with multiple grafts and the following varieties:

Queen Cox
Pristine
Belmac
Rubinette - prone to splitting, was mealy

Red Delicious
Macintosh
Yellow Delicious
Unknown Red

William's Pride.

Some were fine letting them fall to the ground and eating them. But others like Rubinette cracked a lot while still on the tree and were very mealy. I unfortunately did not keep good records this year but I wonder if when the first one of a variety drops, I should just pick them all off the tree and put into cold storage. I would go around daily and lift apples to look for ripe ones but most stayed on and would be cracked the next day.

I bagged them mostly with ziplocs bug some apple maggot control bags and had very little insect pressure. I lost more to cracking and overrippening while on the tree.

I asked the person making that claim to do the iodine test to back up their claim. They didn't respond so I'm going to assume the rest of the world is correct (including the original descriptions) and Granny Smith at the correct time is tart and that one person is wrong and harvesting when they are overripe because of their personal tastes not perfect ripeness.

No, other apples harvested a little early are not always tart. Sometimes they are more bitter. If that was the case stores wouldn't care about getting Granny Smith, they'd simply pick any old apple early and sell them as cooking apples.

Apples picked too late will be sweeter because that's the natural progression to compost.

I'm one who likes the taste of the apples as they age on the tree. Even the popular apples (empires,Mac's) taste nothing like a store bought apple.

My first taste of this season was middle of Aug and I'm still tasting apples each week as they age more on the tree. Sure I've picked 3/4 of the tree but I leave some on to enjoy while I'm doing yard work...keeps me moving.

One tree a Red Baron has two different taste as the apple ages. One apple has the taste of pear in it while a apple right next to it picked the same minute is bitter sweet...what a treat...both are firm which I like.

If you think about it our ancestor planted these trees not to picked them for shipping but to can them at their peakness. Something to think about...maybe they had it right!
md

mykl, I don't understand what you're saying. It sounds like you think Granny Smith should be picked at a point that most people are used to eating them and have never had the experience of eating ones left longer on the tree.

Every account I've read of people in longer season areas than east Washington state that grow Granny Smith have indicated that the apple is much more enjoyable when allowed to "fully ripen".

I have read accounts written of Australian Granny Smiths as being a much different and far superior fruit to what's available in the U.S. and I assume that is because of a much later harvest.

I'm saying there is an ideal point where the conversion to sugar is proper. You can test that with iodine and find pictures to show ideal around the internet.
Until I see an iodine test showing that a sweet GS is at the peak of ripeness I'm going with the original description. The fact that the test is so easy to do and no reply was made only makes me more suspicious.

I'm not saying the ones picked way early, stored forever and then gassed to ripen are correct. But GS was originally described as tart, so I'm betting the ones left until sweet will test as overripe.
They may be more enjoyable to some people's taste but that won't change the fact that they're overripe. I like sweetcorn that is very overripe, that doesn't make "overripe" the correct ripeness. Ripeness is not a matter of personal taste and opinion.

Mykl, what do you mean by "original description", and why should that have any bearing on how any individual enjoys their fruit? Where is this original description from, Australia? As I understand it from several accounts, they eat a much riper GS there. They have the season to "properly" ripen it. Washington falls short.

Over-ripe to most of us means mealy not some accepted level of sweetness for a particular apple. Commercial growers will sell Ginger Gold as both a tart and a sweet because unlike many apples it doesn't taste chalky when picked green and instead is a quite palatable but tarter apple early in its season.

To me, the typical commercial GS in this country tastes chalky. Last year I harvested the first GS apples I've ever enjoyed eating. It was in early Dec. after an unusually warm Nov. By your standards I guess I just like "over ripe" GS. I guarantee you that the vast majority of people would prefer what I consider the ripe version- I love tart apples, by the way- Cox, Bramley etc.

Original description as in the oldest I can find from when GS was new, and yes from AU. It doesn't have any bearing on how anyone should enjoy their fruit. I thought I made that pretty clear by saying I like corn overripe.
But how someone enjoys their food doesn't have any bearing on properly ripe, we have scientific tests to prove ripeness.
Perceptions of sweet or mealy or tart or anything else has nothing to do with it. There are standards that dictate ripeness that have nothing to do with taste.

You don't know if what you ate was overripe by "my" standards, which just happen to be the standards science has set forth, unless you did the iodine test. Did you? Has anyone who claims GS is sweet? As far as I'm finding they haven't, they're simply making a claim of ripeness based on taste.

If you want to say GS tastes better overripe that could be correct. But to claim GS is ripe when it is overripe would not be.

Then my first question would be, how does the "scientific" evaluation matter in any way whatsoever? Why does it interest you? I don't do a starch test because it in no way concerns me. What is the point of your point?

Could it be that the scientific description of a ripe GS was based on the normal picking time in Western Washington and therefore the typical commercial Granny Smith? All the ag-schools engage with is commercial production so that would be the model, wouldn't it? Just because their evaluation is expressed in numbers that allow growers to duplicate a standard doesn't mean that standard isn't arbitrary or in this case based on how the apple matures in what could be interpreted as a too short growing season for Granny Smith.

What you call over ripe corn isn't based on a starch test but on what people generally regard as the prime time to eat sweet corn. Granny Smith was introduced to the public in this country as the Washington version. Most of us have never tasted anything else and don't know the apple as the Australians experience it. Are the seeds of a Washington GS even viable- I doubt it.

As I am growing my apples for MY enjoyment, to decide when to pick each variety only requires that I reach up and pick one. When the taste suits me, they are ready to pick. When I used to live in commercial apple country the county agricultural commissioner would decide when each variety was ready to pick for fresh shipping. Every year it was front page news in the local paper. Al

Proper ripeness matters for storage. Proper ripeness matters as far as the claims being made because the claim is "what GS is 'supposed' to taste like" and "fully ripe".

Commercial production is generally picked underripe so no, ripeness is not based on commercial.

It is not arbitrary, it is a repeatable test, it is science. What is arbitrary is people making claims based on their personal taste. About like you making brix claims based on taste and rather than a measurement of sugar content when you should be talking about taste. If we can't be accurate in language we may as well go back to grunting and scrawling on cave walls.

You are correct, what I call overripe corn is not based on testing, but it's obvious when it goes starchy. There are ways to test for ideal ripeness in corn like everything else.

I don't think it's at all difficult to tell a high brix apple by taste (think Fuji and Goldrush), but that's besides the point- what mystifies me is your grumpy attitude as if this forum is supposed to be about communication between scientists or a place to find scientifically derived info.

Actually I've never tasted a sweet GS but I've tasted ones that didn't taste chalky to me but were still tart and quite delicious- the ones I picked here last Dec. I'm quite sure that these apples would have held up in storage based on the fact that they were just as hard as a commercial GS (without any kind of test- just a layman's knowledge).

The main point of this forum is to share anecdotal experiences and I still completely fail to see the point of your point. How is what you're saying useful to others on this forum? Do you suspect that these southern grown, almost sweet GS's may not store well and you want to sound a warning?

The reason I'm touting the virtues of riper GS's is to encourage more southern growers to try it because all who have seem to take advantage of their longer season to grow a "superior" apple.

Axel grows a truly "ripe" Granny Smith that like every other account posted on this forum of such apples he considers far superior to the commercial standard. I hope he chimes in on how well they store.

I don't know about tree ripened Granny Smith, but I know for sure that the Granny Smith in the markets have gotten worse and worse and less and less ripe (oops, I used taste and texture and not a scientific repeatable test, so I guess my opinion isn't valid?)

I used to enjoy them, and now I've stopped buying them because they are a waste of money. My family, which will eat almost any kind of apple from sour to sugar sweet, will no longer eat the Granny Smith from the market. They just sit on the counter top, unused.

I've got what is starting to look like a Granny Smith (another mislabeled tree), and it is a long ways from being ripe and I don't think the apples have a chance of getting any where near ripe before they freeze off the tree. So my unscientific suggestion is that it is an apple for areas with a much longer growing season than I have.

If the people who actually own Granny Smith trees say that they enjoy the apples off the tree much more than the store bought ones, that is good enough for me. No official scientific test required.

What you've heard about ripe Granny Smiths is true; the flavor is much more complex when I pick them later in the season. They're store-green around the middle of September and a few fall off the tree, and taste pretty much like supermarket ones (bland in these parts). But I've had them hang on until the end of November, expecting them to be mushy and tastless, but oh man, what a surprise. Not just sweet, but sweet, tart, and hints of other flavors I can't put my finger on. People are shocked when they try it.

Harvestman, the real question that needs to be asked is why you are so grumpy about finding out whether it is actually ripe or overripe. This can be done with iodine from a drug store.
Will you defend my wrong information just as strongly if I start telling people the easiest way to prune is by cutting trees down 18" from the ground? Or since all previous information says that is not correct would you not at least ask for something to back up those claims?

Applenut, could you sacrifice a cross section to some iodine? Compare pictures of it done with one now and one from the end of November?
If you need more specifics you can search "iodine test apples" and find information, but you pretty much just have to wipe some across a cross section and wait for the starch to turn blue.

Because I don't buy your definition of ripeness and see no point to it. An apple is ripe when it is at peak eating quality- whatever that is for the person picking the apple. If you want to store it, pick it a bit greener unless it does a good job of holding texture even at peak ripeness. This has always worked for me. I see no need for any more info than that.

The easiest way to prune an apple tree is to cut it as close to the ground as possible- hate those ugly stumps.

Since the best way to know when fruit is ripe is to take a sample, there is value in having fruit that is tasty even though not ripened to perfection. There was a Fuji staring back at me tonight that was a tad bit on the green side, but I had to check anyway. It was not fully ripe, but outstanding just the same. The thought that the rest of the apples on the tree can only get better is very encouraging.

I have seen antique apple tree sellers state a particular apple as best after a few months of storage. Yes, we can gage "ripeness" by taste, when the seeds go from white to black or when the starch iodine test shows most of the starch has been converted to sugar, but any data out there about which varieties may benefit from cold storage as far as obtaining peak "ripeness" or flavor not found during the normal growing season?

Also, since refrigeration just slows down the decay process, why would cold storage time make an apple taste any better than an apple picked between when the seeds change color and the apple falls off the tree ( from ripe to over ripe , if you will)? If you were to pick the apple when just falling off the branch and essentially over ripe, cold storage can't fix an apple which is going mealy into a wonderful tasting apple again?

I don't know why some apples ripen better in refrigeration than at room or outdoor temperature, or many pears, for that matter. It seems that the starch converts to sugar in cold storage without some varieties losing texture as they would at room temp. What is the scientific explanation for this?

I have been tasting my winter apples almost daily all fall. I noticed that up until the tree loses it's leaves the apples continue to sweeten. Immediately after the tree loses it's leaves a great deal of the sweetness is lost. I pick most of them for storage before that time. With many trees the nutrients are drawn back to the roots for winter storage. Maybe some of the sugars are also. I do not know. Maybe there is a study that can tell us. I tend to agree with most of what H-man has to say about ripeness. Certainly some perfectly ripe (by test) apples may be up in sugars but down in other qualities. Sensibly an individuals taste must rule here.
Here is an anomaly for you. My unique winter apples froze solid this morning at 19 degrees. They have already frozen very hard many times. Tomorrow they will be solid, crisp and quite good. I have picked them in the middle of Dec and still very nice. This is the only tree I seen this happen to. All the rest are long gone to mush! This is a very old tree and has always been and still is extremely productive.
Bberry

bberry

If your ever decide to sell scions off of your incredible mystery tree, put me on the list buyers.

Most on this forum will provide wood for free or exchange. I'm less generous then some and require a stamped addressed envelope.

I wonder at what precise temp Goldrush becomes mush. It also holds its texture for longer than other varieties and I assume its high brix, primarily the sugar, provides the resistance to freeze damage. It also has very dense flesh. It can't be grown much further north than my zone 6, however.

bberry, if you don't know what your tree is you should definitely try to keep it going by giving away wood and propagating it on new rootstock yourself. Such an apple not only is useful to humans, but also to wildlife.