2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
In August, the apple orchard owners are busy harvesting. The fruit ripens throughout the month. At the beginning of August, apples of summer varieties are harvested, at the end - the harvest of autumn ripens. There is a lot of work to be done, and you need to prepare for it in advance
Checking the required inventory
For harvesting apples, it is necessary to prepare various equipment. It is better to pick apples with your hands so as not to damage the skin, otherwise they will be poorly stored and will spoil faster. In addition, such fruits will also negatively affect the keeping quality of fruits with a whole intact skin. Therefore, ladders, tripods, goats are required. They are checked for strength and repaired if breakages, loose nails, dilapidated wood are found. This is often remembered on cleaning days, when even the tools needed for repairs are not at hand. And all this takes time, and in the meantime the apples overripe, lose their taste and their appearance deteriorates.
On old tall trees, it is not always possible to reach the fruit with your hands. In this case, you will need a pole with which to pry apples. But it is recommended to use it only in extreme cases, and do not be lazy to get up on the stairs in order to pick apples with your hands where you can reach them. It is difficult to perform the same manipulations with a pole as with a palm. As a result, the stalk may come off the apple, and the fruit will be damaged on the tree or the branch will break.
Preparation of different containers
For storage, apples are laid in boxes, but it is inconvenient to harvest them with them. To do this, use buckets and baskets. They should be covered from the inside with either burlap or a cloth folded several times so that the fruits do not break during the harvesting process.
It would be wise for such a container to acquire hooks to hang the buckets from branches or rungs of stairs when the work is done high from the ground.
For storage to take place "without a hitch, without a hitch", the boxes must be chosen from tightly knit planks close to each other. When there are gaps between them, the edges of the boards can dig into the sides of the apples, damaging their integrity. And this will lead to early decay of the harvested crop.
Cleaning time
It would be more correct not to wait for the full ripening of the crop, but to start harvesting a few days before that. Overripe fruits dry faster, and the pulp becomes mealy and tasteless. But apples, taken to full ripeness, will ripen in a few days. Cleaning signs are:
• covering the fruit with a wax bloom;
• acquisition of a characteristic variety of color, aroma and taste;
• brown seeds.
Such apples are easily removed from the fruit branches. After 3-5 days, they will reach the stage of full maturity. This rule applies to summer and autumn varieties. But winter apples, which are harvested from the last decade of September to the second half of October, will ripen for at least another two months, or even more than three.
Harvesting technology
It is necessary to start cleaning with cleaning the area from fallen apples. They are harvested separately and not mixed with those apples that are plucked from the tree. These fruits must be immediately processed for human consumption, if they are not damaged by diseases and pests.
On trees, they begin to remove fruits first of all from the lower branches. The apple is grasped with the palm so that the index finger is at the place where the stalk is attached to the fruit branch. There is no need to pull the fruit down. With a movement of the brush, the apple is lifted up, and as a result, the fruit should remain on the branch, and the apple should be in the hand along with the stalk.
From the filled buckets, apples are transferred to boxes by hand, while examining the fruits. The crumpled, wormy, rotting ones are laid separately. Undamaged fruits are stacked in rows in boxes, overlapping them with paper, sawdust or straw.
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