How to Tell when your Apples are Ripe & Ready to Pick
Learn the 5 key things to watch for when assessing if your apples are really ripe and ready to pick.
Course: gardening
Keyword: apple, apples
Author: Getty Stewart
Ingredients
1Apple Tree
Instructions
Variety
Knowing the variety of apple you have can help you narrow down WHEN you should start to consider whether or not your apples need picking.
Apples and crab apples can typically be classified as early summer (July to mid August), mid-summer (mid-August to early September) or fall apples (mid-September to October).
If you don’t know the variety, no problem, there are plenty of other ways to judge ripeness. Just don’t be fooled into picking your apples just because your neighbours are picking theirs! You may have a different variety and just because they’re picking, doesn’t mean you should!
Start keeping tabs on your apple tree and soon you’ll get a sense of when your apples are typically ready to harvest. Although, some years there can be up to 3 to 4 week differences in harvest times.
Colour
Look carefully at the colour of your apples, especially the base or ground colour – it may be green, creamy or yellow.
Watch it change as the apples mature and wait for the entire apple to change.
Unless you have a green apple variety like Granny Smith, most apples will turn a softer shade of green or even a creamy yellow when they’re fully ripe.
For example, a Prairie Sensation apple in early July - they’re often a good size and have the START of a red blush, but the base colour is much too green.
Ease of Separation
Ripe apples come off a tree quite easily – they don’t need to be tugged or pulled. Simply hold the bottom of the apple, lift it against the stem and twist. If it doesn’t come off easily, it’s not ripe.
Pip Colour
Pick an apple and slice it open to see what colour the pips or seeds are. A ripe apple, no matter what size or variety, will have dark brown pips. Here’s the pips in one of our apples that fell off the tree mid-July. Notice that one seed is just starting to turn brown while the two beside it are still white. Even though the apple fell off the tree, it is no where near being ripe enough to pick.
Keep testing and tasting your apples, it’s amazing how quickly they can ripen when conditions are hot and sunny. Take photos or just keep tabs on what your ideal apple looks and tastes like and after a couple of successful harvests you’ll know exactly what to look for.
Flavour/Taste
Use an old fashioned taste test to judge the ripeness of your apples. Unless you have a crab apple or a tart apple variety, your apples should not be sour and make you pucker. It’s amazing how much sweeter your apples will become with a couple of days of sunshine.
Video
Notes
Here on the prairies people often pick under ripe apples because they think all prairie apples are sour – which is totally untrue. We have some amazingly sweet apples – you just need to let them ripen!But of course - don’t wait too long! If you’re apples seem mealy, they’re over ripe.