Axel, this chest freezer is a really good idea!...thank YOU!
Someday I should try this too.
In the meantime I store some in the fridge,
one fridge mostly, which is in the basement.
If I put them in sealed plastic bags, they keep
longer, starving them from oxygen helps.
But mostly my apples are in liquid form...
nothing to worry about.
I'm always surprised, how our BC apples,
bought in summer, like Gala, McIntosh
Spartan, Golden Delicious etc.
are about as fresh as when they were picked.
Sure, they can't live them on the tree as long as we do,
nevertheless, they still are very good, when you think
how long they have been stored in ideal controlled atmosphere, [C.A.]
Also, waxing helps too, from the web..

The Chinese were using waxing processes on fruits as early as the twelfth century, but it wasn't until 1922 that waxing was introduced for widespread use. A thin, wax-type coating is applied to apples as a means of protection.

Since I keep honey bees, some day
I might try out coating some apples with bees wax.

From the web..
The most successful C.A. fruit storage has been with apples. Each apple variety differs slightly in requirements for oxygen, carbon dioxide, temperature, and relative humidity. Successful storage for eight months has been achieved with some varieties.

I would be interested in what you
can report by next summer.

Konrad

Maybe someone else can chime in and explain what is happening. The apples out of my refrigerator chest taste nothing like commercial apples. And I even have golden delicious, red delicious, mutus and jonathans in there that are still getting better. The golden delicious are so sweet that they taste like quince jelly, yummmm.

Axel, 6 weeks isn't long term storage at all. The commercial apples are picked very immature in order to last six months. For example, your Jonathans won't be very good by January, or at least mine weren't years ago. But the real storage apples, like Fuji or Goldrush, will last very well until March or even May if done correctly.
The first Goldens I pick go into long term controlled atmosphere as they are the most immature and can be expected to last the longest in storage (sold in May or so). The next 25% of the crop picked goes into mid term CA(opened up late Jan or Feb). The next 25% goes into the regular storage, no CA, just refrigeration. sold ASAP or as market will allow. The last 25% goes to peelers or even juice, as they don't have the "legs" to stand up to storage on a store's shelf.
There are about 100 million boxes of apples that come out of the State of Washington and we simply can't sell them all at once.
What the industry needs to do, and what you will need to do, is use only best long term apple varieties for long term storage. Or buy apples from the Southern Hemisphere. I am not saying your storage won't store apples well, I just don't know how long you can expect to store apples like Jons and Goldens.
I rent storage space for about ten tons of Honeycrisp. I would sure like to have on farm storage for them, but storage like that isn't cheap to build or operate. And the people I rent from consider me a nuisance and only do because...actually I don't know why they do it.

Axel, thanks for this report. I am going to take my last few apples and put them in ziplocs in the fridge and see how they turn out. Since I have a spare basement fridge I may just try to go the ziploc route in that rather than buying a new ice chest.

I am also thinking of walling off a corner in my basement and venting in cold air from outside to keep it cool (we have plenty of that for most of the winter). For about $50 I can get a setup which will open up a vent when the temp gets above a set amount inside. I rigged one on my greenhouse to open it up when it gets too hot, and it works great. In this case it may be a bit trickier because I would also need to have the vent close when it was colder inside than outside. It would probably not be able to keep the apples right above freezing all winter but it could at least keep them pretty close most of the time.

Scott

I have about half a crisper bin of my earliest Arkansas Blacks that have been there a month. I took one out about a week ago to age on the counter. When they're in good shape they even hold up on the counter, it's just barely starting to produce some aroma. The bugged drops I was saucing would've been very dark and ready by now.

When I taste one fresh off the tree I tend to spit after I chew the juice out of them because it is like a mouthful of cardboard. I think some neighbor kids stole some of those "rocks" when they were quite early, I doubt if they'll ever come back for more. (LOL, I just realized I'm planting another "bad" apple next to that one that I'm sure they'll have to reach across the fence to taste, I'm going to have them thinking apples suck.)
But when I was saucing I'd come across some that were the right texture for me and they were amazing in taste, and I tend to not like sweet apples. Maybe it's that I need more than cardboard and sugar to like an apple.

I agree someone needs to make up a wine tasting list of taste descriptions. The only thing I can taste and describe is beer because I've read a list like that. I never understood "fruity" in beer until I read the reason. I don't taste "banana" in beers, but because I know the reason for "banana" in beer I know to describe that flavor as such.
It would have to be a list especially for apples because something like "mealy" wouldn't be covered in wine.
What throws me is I've seen "mealy" used for different things. I've seen it used for what seems to be both dry (like corn meal which is what it should describe) and mushy (I guess like a meal worm has been in it).

For those using sealed bags, fruits and vegetables do need to breath. Maybe the bags designed for vegetables would help, I know they store garden lettuce a lot longer than regular storage bags. They hold humidity while letting gas escape.
I'm liking my new fridge, the crisper drawers have humidity control so the rest of the fridge doesn't dry out what is in there.

In my working life I was in the refrigeration business in what was then California apple country. I can remember one refrigeration service call on an old sulfer dioxide refrigerator that had been used to store a homeowners extra apples. The unit had started leaking sulfer, not surprising as it was nearly 50 years old. You don't need to call a service man to know when you have a sulfer leak or when a old refrigerator is beyond saving. So when I asked the man what he wanted from me he said "could I still eat the apples?" When the apples looked fine I asked, why not? Well he said those are Double Red Delicious apples which were red when I last looked and now they look like Granny Smith. All I could say was give them a try, if sulfer would kill you I would have been dead years ago. I later wished I had asked for an apple to see how they tasted. Al

Axel- which external thermostat? Thanks!

Well, that all seems to make sense now. I think the combination of early picking and controlled atmosphere is probably what leads to commercial apples tasting bland coming out of cold storage. Sorry, Geraldo, I am sure your apples are delicious, I realize one has to make a living too, so there aren't many other options besides CA for commercial growers.

But for those of us that are backyard growers, I agree that to get the best results, you need to grow the old storage apples, that's exactly what I am trying to do. We'll see what keeps well over 6 months in conventional cold storage.

The thermostat is a refrigerator thermostat by Johnson Controls, see http://www.homebrewers.com/product/BE875?META=froogle-BE875

The scale of my apple growing is such that my 18 cu feet chest won't be nearly enough of what will come off about 70 trees. I'll have to make other arrangements when my trees all come into full production.

Well, that all seems to make sense now. I think the combination of early picking and controlled atmosphere is probably what leads to commercial apples tasting bland coming out of cold storage. Sorry, Geraldo, I am sure your apples are delicious, I realize one has to make a living too, so there aren't many other options besides CA for commercial growers.

Oh yeh, Axel, my commercial enterprise is completely different entity from what I grow for my own use and to sell direct even. I am not particularly proud of the commercial offerings from WA State, but under the circumstances (can't sell all the apples in sixty days) it is the best that can be done. This is why it is so cool to be a hobby apple grower, you can grow and eat apples that have a flavor that the rest of the world can't even dream of, because they don't know it even exists.
I am real interested in your storage test and I hope you keep us up to date.
Seventies trees could equal tons of apples for you to store.
G

PS this Mozilla Minefield is FAST!

It is now almost mid-February, Of all the varieties of apples I stored, so far, the winner is Oliver! This apple has turned out to simply be fantastic. The flavor has truly improved, they have gotten sweeter too, and they are as crunchy and juicy as ever. Oliver most definitely didn't start out as my favorite because it wasn't so good right off the tree, but it sure is ending as an all time favorite.

Axel SC,
Look up root cellar plans. I have a cellar seperated into two parts that is used to store apples, pears, potatoes, cabbage, onions, and lots of other fruits and vegetables as they come into season. Fruits are kept in bins and potatoes are holed up in a corner. Vegetables and perishable summer fruits are kept on shelves either fresh or canned. People still use cellars here in WV because they don't use any electricity and you can store enough food for a 4 person family in an 8x8 cellar.

God, I love all this passion for apples and I wish I had Oliver to sample- I've never even heard of it. Never heard of someone useing a freezer which is pretty ingenious. Frost-free is hard on apples.

One little thing that might be of interest- some apples actually break down faster at or slightly below freezing and store better at I think around 40F. I beilieve Honeycrisp is in this group but my memory is questionable.

Still,.. even at the right condition things are breaking down too fast.
How about building your own controlled atmosphere storage in a chest freezer??
Has anybody done this? I think this would be the ultimate.
But for a start....I think we could improve by a vacuum pump on the chest freezer,
heaving the whole freezer under vacuum should help.
Konrad

The Roxbury Russet and Melrose are awsome keepers, but Melrose is not an 'Antique' apple.

I know (well, I think) commercial CA uses nitrogen to displace oxygen, but I wonder whether dry ice would be useful. Yes, it is carbon dioxide, but the oxygen is bound. Carbon dioxide gas is heavier than air, and a small amount of it might be sufficient to displace the air in a nearly-full freezer. It's pretty inert stuff. Might not take much to replace the amounts lost by leakage, especially if the freezer were truly air tight (and a horizontal freezer would be easier to maintain levels in than a vertical one.) Readily available at grocery stores, and not expensive. However you can arouse suspicions: grocery personnel are told to be aware of purchases of dry ice since it is used in the manufacture of methamphetamines.

Just musing, all just FWIW.

Amongst fruit fanatics there tends to be a preference for heirloom varieties, or at least varieties that aren't available at the grocery store. My attitude is different. I believe that fruit should be judged on its own merits and I have found that any fruit from my orchard is distinctly different from anything I could buy.

Modern breeding programs screen thousands of apples to come up with a single winner, and I think this has led to some really outstanding varieties- particularly when it comes to apples that store well.

I would love to see the results of blind taste tests of unnamed apples grown in a well managed home orchard. These apples would be represented by moderns and heirlooms. My hunch is that the likes of Braeburn, Pink Lady and Goldrush would kick butt. Particularly if the apples were taken out of common storage in March.

My ideal home orchard is a mixture of modern and antique apples and I tend to eat equal quatities of both. What's your opinion?

I don't distinguish either in between heirlooms and modern apples. I am after flavor. Apples taste differently depending on where they are grown. I have not been impressed with Braeburns grown here, but Jonagolds are sooooo good.

But when it comes to commercial apple breeding programs, flavor is at the bottom of the list, storage, shipping and disease resistance is at the top. So many apples that are outstanding garden varieties don't cut the mustard. A good example is viking, which PRI doesn't push because it's susceptible to scab. But it's the best apple I've ever tasted hands down. It doesn't keep well, but it belongs in every backyard, because when you get it at just the right ripeness, it's one of the best fruits on the planet.

A lot of old heirlooms really are over-rated. I tried Rhode Island Greening, it was disappointing. Cox Orange pippin in my opinion doesn't live up to its name either. But then, I am pretty much in the McIntosh camp of apples, I gravitate to that fragrant, vine-like complexity, and I also like sweet apples like My Jewell, Jonagold, Mutsu and other golden delicious offsprings.

When it comes to storage, some unimpressive freshly picked apples can really ripen to outstanding quality, just like a well aged fine wine. So you never know, one has to simply try different things.

I do think that the local climate makes a grand difference. Here in California, the Albert Etter selections like Waltana, pink pearl and Katharine are delicious, but they might not be so good in other climates.

So I say graft many varieties, and see which ones end up being good, and toss the rest. I am up to about 200 varieties, I don't plan on keeping them all. I already have loosers like York that I am grafting over.

Hey Konrad,

I don't think putting the whole freezer under vacuum would work. Assume a freezer size of 3 X 5 ft, the sidewall pressure from even a minus 1 psi would be the equivalent of about 2000 lbs. on the sidewall. I think it would suck it in like a paper bag.

BTW, I haven't built the apple grinder yet, but still plan to, and have kept all the notes you gave me (thank you thank you!) Maybe this fall I'll start. It's a great idea for fast production.

Mark

marknmt:

I'd be careful about too much CO2 in your home or any enclosed space. Above a fairly low % it is deadly. Walking into CA storage can be deadly. Too much will also kill apples.

The Fruitnut

I don't really see the point of trying to do controlled atmosphere storage at home. This is precisely what reduces store bought apples to the likes of eating cardboard.

Apples are alive, and in fact emit heat in storage. The point is to slow down the process of aging enough so that the apple lasts a long time, but not to the point that the apple stops metabolizing altogether. The latter leads to major flavor loss.

I wish they would force apples to be labeled Controlled Atmosphere (CA) storage versus Conventional Storage. CA simply sucks. Great for decorative apples in hotel lobbies, but not good for edible apples.

Thanks for the very intelligent observations regarding dry ice/carbon dioxide- points well taken.

Still, modest amounts of dry ice can be safely handled with only reasonable care, and towards the end of the storage season might one not get a couple of more weeks out of the harvest this way?

Again, just thoughts.

Couldn't agree more with the labelling idea. Buying store fruit is a constant frustration, and the labelling would provide the consumer with another tool. I'm for it.

Best and good luck,

Mark

I love Jonagold also, and it usually stores well for me except when it's too hot in the final month of ripening, especially if the grounds wet. On these types of seasons JG is worthless.

Axel, I don't know how long you've been growing fruit but CA has such a consistant climate that you may not be fully aware how much apples, especially heirlooms, are affected by climate. I know you have some knowledge of this, but here in the eastcoast growing seasons vary so much that there is tremendous variation of quality from year to year of many varieties. A season that produces very good Jonagolds may not produce good Mutsus.

This experience of varying seasons makes me very conscious how regionally affected evaluations are.

Also, I think you are very wrong to say breeders don't put a high priority on taste. I was working with Roger Way for a while to get some apple ID's. He was part of the team that developed Jonagold and a lot of other great varieties at Cornell and he was most proud of the taste of the apples he helped develope. I'm sure most breeders are the same, but they also shoot for storability.

Now I am very glad to be wrong on this topic - it's very good news to hear that breeders are actually focusing on taste. Jonagold is quite delicious. I read "The Fruit Hunters" and the author interviewed the Zeigers of Zeiger genetics. They admitted that most of the focus of their stone fruits has been on shippability, but they claim to now have changed their focus, and they are trying to improve on taste - the goal is to have a peach that tastes as good as the old heirlooms, but also ships well and stays good for weeks at a time.

Yes, I am not sure I would even know how to grow apples on the East coast. I feel very fortunate to live in the Santa Cruz mountains, we have about the best climate one could ever ask for when it comes to apples. They are so tasty in my orchard, that is what got me so enthusiastic about apples. I spent years trying to grow all sorts of things from subtropicals like macademias to citrus and stone fruits. None rival the perfection of the apples in my orchard. We even get outstanding Summer apples because our Summers here (upper 60's to mid 70's daytime, mid 40's to low 50's night time in the middle of July and August) are equivalent to East Coast Fall weather. Our first apple to ripen is Anna around late May, and the last apple to ripen is Williams Pride in late January. Feb through April is covered primarily by storage apples.

But we do get seasonal fluctuations here too that shift which apples end up tasting good. We get a period of hot Fall weather that - if it shows up too early tends to ruin the early Fall apples which seem not to like much heat. If the heat doesn't show up until October, then we get nearly perfect apples on all the varieties. Last Fall the Cox orange pippin harvest was ruined because the hot weather showed up at the end of August. They went mealy very quickly.

Also, I think you are very wrong to say breeders don't put a high priority on taste.

Yes, while I think that might have been true even in the not too distant past I don't think it is true right now. The commercial entities know that they must have flavor to compete these days. But, they also know they must have storage ability and appearance. I would like to find an antique variety that tastes as good as a home grown Pink Lady, Goldrush or Jazz. I don't think one exists. Of course taste is subjective. And I must second the opinions on a good Jonagold.
The Washington State apple breeding program has been slow to get off the ground, but I am told there are some tremendous apples in the pipeline.

Ah Geraldo, a man after my own heart. Still, I do find a lot of antiques to be well worth growing but I am in a part of the country with a climate well suited for many of them. I'm happy to be able to grow Baldwin, Roxbury Russett, Northern Spy, etc. Unlike you Alex, I can't call any apple my favorite or the best- just like my mother with her 5 children.

I know about Santa Cruz as I was raised in S. Ca. where my favorite apple was SC grown Arbemarle Pippin. They used to market it as the ugly apple that tastes good. It still provides Martinella apple juice with its distinctive taste.

I was happy to leave Ca. As a grower the relentless droughts about drove me crazy and the relentless development had an even worse affect on my sanity.

In my previous post I should have said that I haven't found an antique that was better. I do rank Ashmeads, for example, right up there.
"I wish they would force apples to be labeled Controlled Atmosphere (CA) storage versus Conventional Storage. CA simply sucks." axel, they do. It is a grade and it is right on the box. I guess just ask the produce guy at the market.
http://www.fruitgrowersnews.com/pages/arts.php?ns=1110

It's March, and the clear winner has emerged: pink lady. None of the other apples have kept such crunchiness, freshness and flavor as pink lady, a truly outstanding apple. Most of the other apples have all developed some "off" flavors. My Jewell turns out to be remarkably resilient, still crunchy and flavorful, but not at the stage anymore where I want to reach for seconds.

But my storage apples, even the worst ones are better than a store bought apple. I did try some store bought organic apples that are on shelves now, and they pretty much now all taste the same - bland. in a blind side by side taste, most people would not be able to tell the difference between a March store bought gala, braeburn, or cameo, they taste completely identical, a complete lack of aromatics, just some basic sweet and acid flavor.

Cripps Pink or Pink Lady was also my winner here, although Goldrush and Fuji held their texture, but even in plastic with a few holes Goldrush does finally shrivel. PL's skin seems to seal out moisture very well. These 3 make a pretty good combination of flavors to have as winter (and spring) alternatives.

We should all offer kudos to the work of modern apple breeders all over the world who have in fact made great contributions the the pleasure of growing and eating apples. That doesn't take anything away from the value of many of the varieties that have come from much farther past.

axel_sc, what would be your suggestion for an apple that ripens sooner than Pink Lady? I hear they take a long season, which we don't have here. How long a season does Pink Lady take and when does it bloom in comparison to others?

Based upon your earlier post I ordered scion of Oliver without knowing much about it either.