The tug test and the pips

Apples give you several honest signals when they are ready, and the simplest is the lift test. Cup the fruit in your palm, lift it gently and give a small twist. If it comes away with the stalk still attached and barely any resistance, it is ready. If it clings stubbornly and needs a proper pull, leave it another week and try again. Stalks that part cleanly from the spur are another sign that the fruit has finished swelling.

Then check the pips. Cut a sample apple across the equator. Pips that are dark brown or almost black mean the fruit is ripe and the sugars have developed; pale cream pips mean it is still filling out and will taste sharp and watery. Taste is the final judge — a ripe apple is aromatic, sweet at the base and juicy rather than floury.

Watch the ground as well. A few clean windfalls appearing under the tree, without rot, usually means picking time is close. Ground colour tells you plenty too: as apples ripen, the green around the stalk and in the shaded side turns yellow or creamy.

Pick in dry weather

Choose a dry, still day once the dew has lifted. Wet fruit bruises more easily and stores badly, because dampness in the stalk cavity invites rot. Handle every apple as though it were an egg, because a bruise made by a thumbnail today shows up as a brown, sunken patch in store a month later.

• Use both hands: one to steady the spur or branch, one to lift and twist the fruit upwards.
• Never shake the tree or yank the fruit. Shaken apples bruise each other in the bucket.
• Keep the stalk intact. A stalkless apple shrivels and rots far sooner.
• Lower fruit into a shallow trug or basket rather than dropping it into a deep bucket.
• Work from the outside and lower branches inwards and upwards, so you are not knocking good fruit down.

Early varieties such as Discovery are best eaten straight from the tree and will not keep — pick them as you need them. Maincrop keepers can be picked in one or two passes over a fortnight.

Sorting the crop

Sort as you pick, into separate containers, rather than tipping everything into one heap to deal with later.

• Perfect keepers — unblemished, stalk intact, no bruising: these go into store.
• Eaters for now — slight marks or small bruises: use within a week or two.
• Cider and juice fruit — clean but damaged, or sharp and tannic varieties: straight to the mill.
• Discard — mouldy, rotten or maggoty fruit: compost it. Never add it to the cider heap.

Windfalls are useful but only if they are sound. An apple that has lain in wet grass for days is a compost candidate, not a cider apple. Rinse dirty fruit and cut out any bruised or rotten patches before milling.

Storing through winter

Apples want cool, dark, humid and frost-free conditions: around 3–4°C, 85–90% humidity and gentle air movement. A frost-free garage, an unheated spare room or a proper store with slatted shelves all work well.

• Lay keepers in a single layer on slatted trays, not touching each other.
• Wrap individual apples in newspaper or dry straw for the longest storage.
• Keep them well away from potatoes and onions, which give off gases that taint the fruit.
• Check the trays weekly and remove any fruit that has gone soft or brown.

Varieties differ enormously. Bramley keeps into January or February, Cox's Orange Pippin to around December, Egremont Russet through to Christmas, and Ashmead's Kernel often into spring. Early apples last a fortnight at best, so eat them first.

Windfalls and small-batch cider

Small-scale cider is one of the great rewards of an old orchard. The first rule is simple: no rotten fruit. Cut out bruises and rot, rinse away soil, then let the fruit stand for a day or two in a clean tub, covered against wasps, to soften.

Scratter or mill the apples, then press them. Aim for juice at around 1.050–1.060 on the hydrometer for a dry cider of roughly 6–7%. If your apples are all dessert varieties, the cider will taste thin, so blend in sharp or bitter-sweet fruit for backbone.

Ferment in a sterilised vessel with an airlock, somewhere steady at 15–18°C. Wild yeast usually starts within a day or two; a cultured cider yeast gives more control. Rack off the lees after a week or two, then again a month later. Bottle once fermentation has finished and the cider has cleared, priming with a little sugar if you want sparkle. Store bottles somewhere cool and check them — a warm spell can turn a still cider lively.

Last jobs after harvest

Clear every fallen apple from beneath the trees, as this breaks the codling moth and apple sawfly cycle. Rake and compost clean leaves. Prune in winter while the trees are dormant, removing dead, damaged and crossing wood, and opening the centre for light and air. A mulch of well-rotted compost around the drip line, kept clear of the trunk, sets the tree up for next season.