Keeping Apples for Winter

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 470, 25 June 1948, Page 23

Keeping Apples for Winter

Dear Aunt Daisy, I heard you enquiring about the storing of apples for one of your many Links -in the Daisy Chain. Here is a tried and tested method from many years ago, when I was a domestic in a lovely country home. We used to hardpick the matured but firm apples (not ripe), taking great care with handling them and going over them for spots or blemishes. Then we would pack them in crates or cases with the slats far apart to allow free passage of air, being careful to place each apple stem downwards, or om its side, so that any rain-water would run off them. Fine wire-netting was placéd around the cases to prevent rats or birds from making raids on them. Then they were placed on benches in the shade of a thick hedge and were subject to rain, wind and hail, but not sun. Apples treated in this way kept perfectly till October or November. Of course we used to have a tour of in- _ spection now and again, in case one or two may have gone bad. I think the idea of keeping the cases on benches was to prevent slaters and slugs and snails from attacking them. It is interesting to note that apples that were kept in a store-house particularly designed and recommended for that purpose proved a complete failure! It was built in the orchard while I was still employed there. The shelves were made of fine wire-netting, with open spaces right around the top and bottom of the store-house, covered with fine wire-netting, to keep birds, etc., out. We took the same care with sorting and inspecting and yet the apples in the store-house deteriorated in a few weeks and in a matter of three months were practically a dead loss-proving that the rain, etc., was the thing that kept them fresh and sound. To store pears we used to pack each one separately rolled up in a piece of old flannel and — in a dark place. "Fitzroy."