Michael Basedow and Andy Galimberti, CCE ENYCHP 

Your apple harvest should be timed to provide the best quality fruit to your specified market. While fruit destined for immediate sales and eating can be picked for optimal color and flavor, fruit destined for long-term storage need to be picked while less mature, to prevent the fruit from being over-ripe when they reach the consumer.

To help determine when your blocks are ready to be harvested for long-term storage, there are a few maturity metrics you or an employee on your farm can test, including fruit firmness, brix, and the starch pattern index.  

If you would like a brush up on the basics of these tests, or would like to train some of your new employees, we developed a short training video demonstrating how to perform these tests on the farm to help key-in on your optimal harvest windows. 

The video can be viewed on the ENYCHP YouTube channel at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6WjbQ2v6w0