Gravenstein harvest
Organic fruit growing requires some additional work and compromise. In terms of additional work, perfect looking fruit requires manual pest control, such as I did with the nylon socks I used to cover most of my apple crop. I was a little behind schedule this year and didn’t get to my gravenstein apples in time, so I let them grow “au natural.” Above you can see a 25 lb bag of apples I harvested today. Not only are some of the apples ugly with pock-marked skins, many of the apples were actually on the ground when I harvested them. I’ve found that nature knows when an apple is done and it really isn’t until the tree starts to drop mature fruit that the fruit is ready. So I pick apples up of the ground and picked the rest of the ripe fruit from the tree.
Gravenstein with skin problems
As I said, some of the apples were a big ugly. But, ugly apples can still be used.
Inside of “ugly” gravenstein
Cutting into the apple shows you that the inside of the apple looks great. Just a few little spots here and there need to be removed.
Gravenstein peeled
Cutting the skin off shows that the problem is really just cosmetic. Apples like this are great for sauce, pies, and ciders.
So, don’t let a few cosmetic problems stop you. Eat your ugly fruit!!!
Sandy
Definitely a case of ugly that is only skin deep. We have become so used to expecting perfect (often engineered so) food that we have lost sight of the fact that most fruit was blemished prior to the recent practice of dousing the orchard in chemicals from the start of the year to the end of the season.
I agree Laura. Stores won’t even put anything on the shelf if it isn’t perfect. Farmers’ markets have a broader range, but it’s really only in the home garden that people see what fruits and vegetables actually look like when they are not industrially produced (with massive chemicals) and sorted for absolute perfection.
I have an apple orchard with three hundred trees that is never sprayed with anything…even the so called organic possibilities. I would rather have a few blemishes than to have any chemical on my apples.
The secret this year to our (rather nice looking, if I say so myself) fruit is keeping the chickens in the orchard from October through May. They got to feast upon the fallen fruit as well as any pests that may have been infesting said fruit. As a result, even the ‘ugly’ tree that we were about ready to cut down due to the poor quality of fruit has been producing usable and internally-unblemished fruit. We now have a designated cider tree, thanks to the ladies (and one bastard of a rooster)!
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