Handy Tips on How to Store Your Fruit

Given the warm weather we have seen early on this summer, fruit trees are bearing their crops slightly earlier than is normally expected. So we thought it was a good time to start thinking about fruit storage so that you can enjoy the fruits of your labour for longer.

It is a shame when you have huge crops of fruit and struggle to use them all before they pass their best. No one likes to see food wasted – particularly not if you have grown it yourself. One way to prevent this with apples, pears, quince and medlar is to store the fruit. This not only prolongs the life of the fruit but it means that crops that come in to fruition in September or October could still be ok to eaten 2 or 3 months down the line.

It tends to be the varieties that ripen towards the end of the fruit season that take better to storage, such as Bramley’s seedling apples and conference pears.

The fruit will all store for different lengths of time but the majority will manage between 4 to 8 weeks.
Anywhere will do for storage really so long as it is cool (around 5°C), frost free, slightly humid, dark and well-aerated. It is also important that there are no pests around to spread disease (or eat your fruit!) An ideal fruit store could be a cellar, garage or garden shed.

There are 4 key steps to follow when storing fruit:

1. Make sure the container you use will allow air to move through it. Something like a crate or slatted shelves would work well.
2. Pick fruit to put in the store just before it ripens as under-ripe fruit stores better. It is also a good idea to check that they are blemish free, with their stalks intact, so that they do not deteriorate in the store and impact on other fruit stored nearby
3. Lay the fruit in single layers, not touching. Try not to bruise the fruit as it is put in to the store. Apples can be laid on top of each other but make sure enough air can still get through to all of the fruit
4. Keep different crops separate as they ripen at different rates and keep them away from strong smells like paint or onions which may taint the fruit.

Once in store it is important to check your fruit regularly as it can ripen at different rates. You will notice a subtle change in colour and texture as they ripen. Once they are almost ripe bring the fruits in to the house to allow them to warm up from the cold. Fruits leak a stronger scent when they ripen and this can impact on the speed of ripening of other fruits, so they need to be removed quickly from the batch.

If you see any disease starting in the fruit as you check it make sure you remove the infected fruit so that the problem does not spread across the healthy crop.