When is fruit ready?

ChocClare

There is a common near my home where some enlightened person long ago planted all sorts of fruit trees - I have picked cherries and elderflower there this year, got myself 3lb plums last weekend as well as the usual blackberries and am now thinking about setting forth with my fruit picker on the apple and pear trees.

Obviously, because this is public land, no-one has ever thinned the fruit out in June, so the trees are covered in clusters of quite small fruit rather than smaller numbers of large fruit that you'd expect to see on a fruit tree grown in a garden. As a result, it's quite difficult to gauge when the fruit is ripe - there are plenty of windfalls, but that may be because the fruit is very crowded.

Could someone tell me when apples and (especially) pears are ready to harvest? There are four or five varieties of apples - what looks like a cox, a bramley, a green one that looks rather like a granny smith and a red one that I don't recognise at all. I don't know which variety the pear trees are, but they are not long, like conference pears are. I read somewhere that you should pick pears green and allow them to ripen off the tree, and somewhere else that you don't harvest them at all until October.

All information most gratefully received!!

thriftlady_2

The way to tell if an apple is ripe is to cut it up and look at the pips. They should be brown/black. If they are white the apples aren't yet ready.

Apple varieties ripen at different times. One of the earliest is Discovery which have been in my farmshop for a few weeks now. These have been joined by our local variety- Worcesters which are fairly common. Cox's Orange Pippins come a few weeks later and some varieties later still. Some can be picked really late, some store well in to the spring. Early varieties don't tend to store well.

I think the pip thing goes for pears too. I noticed the farmshop had the first of their pears last week.

ChocClare

Thanks, thriftlady - the red apples I've seen may well be Discovery, actually, as they do look ready now. I'll need to do my scrumping in stages in any case, as I've got to do something with the proceeds, LOL!

So I guess I'll just have to go with my penknife in my hand as well as my fruit-picker. Has anyone got any approximate harvest times for pears? Are they harvested later?

Chipps

Pears also ripen at different times. I think I would "suck it & see!" ie pick one & try it!

simgranny

I was just looking this up for my own pears (comice) and the general advice seems to be to pick pears when they are semi-ripe, just changing from green to yellow. If left to ripen on the tree they do not store so well apparently.