Helpful hints: how to properly preserve apples until winter

Gardeners who boast a rich harvest apples, want to keep them until the New Year. It is easier to store apples in the form of compotes and jams, but fresh apples contain more vitamins, so they are especially useful in winter and autumn. Keeping your harvest fresh for a long time is possible if you follow the rules for storing apples and carefully choose varieties.

Content:

• The best varieties of apples for storage
• Preparing apples before storage
• How to keep apples until winter: the best options
• How to store apples in an apartment

The best varieties of apples for storage

Various varieties of apples differ not only in appearance and taste, but also in the so-called keeping quality, that is, the ability to be stored and not spoil for a long time.

How to store apples depends on the characteristics of the particular variety.

Some are enough to put in boxes, others will have to tinker with. Some varieties are able to last not only until winter, but also until spring, without losing their nutritional properties and taste:

• Knight. This variety is called that for a reason. Vityaz apple trees are very strong, fertile, and the fruits themselves are stored almost until next summer. The apples are dense, green with red sides. They ripen quite late, in September. The fruits are picked in the fall, but if you let them lie down for a couple of months, they will only taste better. The apples are large, can reach 200 g, have a sweet and sour taste.
• Spartan... Apples of this variety are not too large (up to 120 g), but they are stored for a very long time, until spring. The apples themselves are pink-red with yellow blotches, sweet, maybe a slight, barely noticeable sourness. The Spartan apple tree is early ripening, but it is stored a little less than Vityaz, under favorable conditions - until mid-spring.
• Welsey... Wellsey apple trees have pink-green fruits that can be stored for quite a long time. Apples can be called small (from 80 to 120 g), but the taste is quite high. The taste of apples can vary depending on the place of growth, the age of the tree, but it is always sweet, there may be a slight sourness.
• Amber. Yellow apples, which are more often grown in the Urals. Fruits are small, sweet and sour, stored well and for a long time. They can lie until the end of January if plucked before they are fully ripe. The taste will not change from this.
• Antonovka. These apple trees are popular in many regions of Russia. Apples are greenish-yellow, medium-sized, sweet and sour. They are dense, juicy and keep well until winter. It is convenient not only to store Antonovka, but also to transport it over long distances, subject to the packing rules.

Preparing apples before storage

If you comply with the requirements for preparing apples for storage, they will stay fresh even longer. Preparation begins from the moment cultivation harvest. To keep it longer, apple trees need to be well looked after, watered and processed from pests: wormy apples are not stored.

The preparation stage also includes the correct harvesting, processing of apples and storage facilities:

1. For apples to be stored for a long time, they must be harvested before they are overripe. If 5-6 ripe apples fall from the apple tree, it's time to harvest. These fruits will be best stored.Some varieties recommend removing unripe from the tree so that they come down in the process. storage.
2. You need to pick apples in dry weather, moving from the lower branches to the upper ones and without breaking the stalks.
3. During the growth process, a natural whitish bloom forms on apples, you do not need to strive to erase it, thinking that it is dust and dirt. This bloom will extend the shelf life of apples and protect them from rotting. It is advisable not to wash or wipe the apples at all before storing.
4. After picking, apples do not need to be thrown to avoid bruising and rotting. The fruits are neatly and carefully folded into the basket.
5. Apples must be sorted out and only whole, undamaged fruits should be selected for long-term storage. It is advisable to immediately sort them out into varieties in order to store them separately.
6. To protect apples and extend their shelf life, they can be dipped in liquid wax, paraffin, or glycerin. A solution of calcium chloride, which can be purchased at the pharmacy in the form of ampoules, helps well to preserve apples and protect them from decay.
7. If you have a germicidal lamp at home, you can hold apples under it before storing. This will prevent rotting and destroy any existing infection. You need to irradiate apples for half an hour on each side, move the lamp at a distance of at least 1.5 meters.
8. Before storage, you need to check the room for the presence of fungus, pests, excessive dampness.

How to keep apples until winter: the best options

There are many ways to store apples. The choice of this or that method depends on the desired storage duration, the presence of certain conditions, a separate room, apple variety, etc.

Apples can be prepared, processed, packaged in different ways. The result largely depends on this. The main options for packaging apples:

• Conventional storage in boxes and baskets. The easiest way to store apples. It has both clear advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is simplicity, economy of effort, time and money. Minus - apples are not always stored in this way for a long time. You can put apples in boxes in 2 layers, no more. Otherwise, when one fruit decays, it will quickly infect the rest, and the losses will be more noticeable. With this storage method, you need to check your crop as often as possible so as not to miss the beginning rot.
• Storage in paper. The good thing about this method is that it isolates each fruit from each other. If one apple is infected, the rest will be protected. You will have to spend time and wrap each apple, put them in a box or basket with the stalks up.
• Storage using bulk materials. To isolate apples from each other and protect them from rotting will help not only paper, but also sand and ash, onion husks, moss, sawdust, dry leaves. To do this, any of the listed materials is poured onto the bottom of the box, apples are laid out at some distance from each other, and the top is again covered with material. With this method, apples are stored for as long as their variety allows.
• Storage in plastic bags. Plastic bags also protect apples well. In order not to spend money on a large number of packages, you can put 3-4 apples of the same variety in 1 package. It is advisable that the apples are not wet. The bag is tied tightly, and small holes are made in it for air circulation.
• Storage in the ground. If there is no cellar, you can store apples simply in the ground. The pit is made in advance, up to half a meter deep. When the temperature becomes sub-zero, the bottom of the pit is laid out with spruce branches to protect the crop from mice, then the apples are packed in plastic bags and covered with earth. The disadvantage of this method is that it will not be easy to eat apples on New Year's, because the earth can freeze.

How to store apples in an apartment

Not everyone has cottages, cellars, etc. Sometimes the crop has to be stored right in the apartment. Well, if there is a balcony, he may well notice the cellar in the winter.

Optimum temperature storage apples in the apartment from +5 to -2 degrees, so the balcony should be glazed and insulated if the frosts in your area are strong.

If there is no balcony, you can come up with a small box or bag and hang apples outside in winter. A pantry is also suitable if the temperature is not too high there. If the frosts are very strong, and the balcony is not insulated, you can make a special thermobox for storing apples, which will always maintain the desired temperature.

It is easy to make a thermal box:

• It is enough to find 2 boxes of different sizes so that one fits into the other.
• There should be enough space between the walls of the larger and smaller boxes to put insulation there: rags, sawdust, foam.
• Insulation is placed on the bottom of a small box, then apples and a layer of insulation again.
• We put a small box in a large one and insulate it again on the sides.
• It is advisable to cover the entire box with something else, for example, a warm blanket, an old fur coat.

The difficulty is that it will not be so easy to get apples in winter: you need to remove all layers of insulation, and then put them back. But apples will be stored for a long time.

If the harvest is not too much, you can store it in boxes, first wrapping each apple with wrapping paper, paper towel or old newspaper. However, it is worth remembering that the paper protects against rotting, but not from freezing.

Apples packed in an airtight material are stored longer due to the slowing down of metabolic processes. Therefore, you can put cling film on the bottom of the box, lay out the apples and wrap them in plastic. You can also wrap each apple separately or pack it in a plastic bag. This method is more expensive but more effective.

More information can be found in the video: