Since there seem to be some here who might be interested, I thought I would tell you about my Long Keeping Apples project. Basically, the idea is to document (and hopefully obtain) every apple variety I can find that stays on the tree from December onwards. I have even found some that can stay on the tree into March/April. Of course you probably would not want to leave apples on the tree that long since they do take a bit of a beating and the birds eat them etc. The ability to stay on the tree is pretty much just an easy to observe analog for “will probably store well” - although I have not yet definitively proven that correlation.
The website documents the latest date I have personally observed the apple to be on the tree along with photos and other information (such as taste, country of origin etc). Besides collecting the apples, I am also in the early stages of a breeding program - but that’s a topic for another post if there is any interest.
Cool list and nice reference site. I might add: Pomme De’ Fer, Shockley{and Cantrell and Grizzle strains} Cooper’s Market, Piervomaiskoie, Terry Winter, Dodge’s Crimson, Lord Burghley and Beachamwell as more apples that last until April and beyond.
I’m surprised I deselected “William Crump” as a lesser storage time apple. And did not expect to see Margil on the list.
It seems you’re interested in “long hanging apples” rather than “long keeping apples” right? In other words, not how long they can be kept after harvest, but rather now long they last when left unharvested. There’s probably a lot of overlap between the two categories, with long hanging apples also being long keeping, but specifically only long keeping varieties which do not easily fall from the tree after ripening.
I have to disappoint you in this at least in my experience with. long storage apples in my climate. For example take Roter Eiserapfel which was traditionally stored in root cellars or actually burried in a ditch in non-waterlogging ground in a bed of straw and covered with soil (+ a vent) (we call it “krecht” - which sounds like bastardized German). In my experience when the night temperatures start dropping to maybe 3-5°C, the apples drop off the tree. I was walking the orchard when it happened last year. It was my record speed harvest for which I got hit on the head a few times. Yet, the apples can survive stored outside sheltered from rain and snow through cycles of freezing (left some outside in -12°C last year, but our dog finally got them in late February). Even the windfall will keep unless the flesh is exposed. @Oepfeli grows the same variety.
I have similar experience with some local varieties.
It’s actually very hard to find apples on trees here - we have quite a large bear population in a large part of the country and thrushes year-round everywhere. .
I have seen some on trees though in chateau and castle gardens with public access.
I don’t know how long Goldrush will hang on the tree (I hope to find out this year) but I have personal experience of it storing well in the refrigerator for at least five months. The texture changes but the flavor improves.
Hanging on the tree into December is useless in most of the US as the apples will freeze and get mushy. That said Yates is my latest apple by far, it will hang until spring if you let it. They also store a very long time… I still have a few in the back of my fridge from last year. They are a bit mealy I admit, but still good eating. I pick them before the first hard freeze which is usually at the end of November.
Re your list many of them I would call very average storage apples. Freyberg and Spitz don’t store long at all for example. Many of the old apple books list storage capabilities of different apples, that could be worth a look.
Thank you all for the apple variety suggestions. I am in the UK and unfortunately many of the varieties are not available here - but I have noted them down and will keep trying to obtain them.
Actually I am primarily interested in “long storing” apples rather than “long hanging on the tree” apples. I take the point that the length of time hanging on the tree does not necessarily correlate to long storing but one has to start somewhere. I have over 200 varieties in my collection now, however most are still young and are not producing fruit yet. It simply would not be possible for me to obtain and store apples from that many varieties in order to conduct a reasonable storage trial. My thinking is that the “long hangers” are more likely to store well into March/April than an apple that drops in October. Maybe that’s not accurate but surely some of them will be winners. In the event they don’t work out I will have a nice diverse set of apple varieties - some which will do well here and some which will not.
In the future the website will be updated with personally observed “long storing” results as I get them.
There are over 300 “long hanging on the tree” apples listed on the LongKeepingApples.com website. So how does one identify that many apples? Well it’s surprisingly simple really.
In the UK we have an organization called the National Fruit Collection - it is tasked with keeping the national collection of Apples, Plums, Pears and (I think) cherrys. They collect apples from all over the world (they have about 3000) and it is open to the public. All I did was purchase a ticket in Dec, Jan, Feb and March (over several years) and then walk around looking for trees with apples still on them and taking pictures of the nameplate and the fruit. Instant documentation - the variety name and a latest observed hanging on the tree date are all then known. I can then enter them in a database and so serve them off a website.
Of course I was greatly assisted by the fact that in some years the NFC does not have the resources to actually pick the apples and so they were just left on the tree to drop and rot as they wished and so were available for me to document in the winter months.
Unfortunately, many of the old trees (50 years or so) have now been grubbed up as part of their renewal program and the younger orchard that has replaced it does get picked. So I got lucky - I hit the narrow window in which to select the long hanging apple varieties from amongst a much larger collection.
Of course, that’s the NFC apples, the foundling apples are a different story.
While I applaud the effort and intention, I must say that the metric you are using is flawed. It is not even a correlation, if you are thinking beyond January, which is not loong storage in my book. Historically speaking, you would want your long storage apples last well into April and beyond. If possible until you had a fresh crop of let’s say White Transparent or Red Astrachan.
Just tree very cheap examples:
Golden Delicious: drops off the tree in September / October depending on heat. Does not last on the tree until X-mas even in exceptionally mild weather. Keeps in a cool room until April and beyond. It may shrivel, but it is still delicious.
Roter Eiserapfel: drops off the tree between October and November depending on day/night temp difference and frost date. It is quince-heavy (the name is actually Iron Apple in Slovak) and it would have to defy physics to hang in winter. Keeps through May and beyond.
Red Delicious: If forgotten, will stay on the tree until birds finish it in December / January depending on freezing and defreezing. It may last until February, but we only keep it for our dog. His idea of palatable includes mealy and insipid , which describes it quite well from November onwards. (I have stored them until April once or twice, but just because I couldn’t make myself move them to compost.)
In terms of UX, when I look at a list of long storing apples, I really want to see how long they store. You don’t really provide that metric on the site, or it’s hidden in some descriptions. What I see from your table is information on how how long I can leave apples on a tree in a mild temperate climate if I want to eat them immediately.
This here Odrůdy jablonà is a table that lists varieties with information about harvest, consumer maturity and storage. Just translate to English and follow the “other names” listed for oddly translated names.
Some of the variety sub-pages have info on “hanging dates” from old pomologies, but it’s there as a character description rather than practical info and often accompanied with warning to pick at earlier dates for storage purposes.
NFC is a good guide. Lots of rare apples are listed their. Many sorely deserving of gaining new homes. Fillingham Pippin, Histon Favorite, Charlotte’s Daunt and many more.
In terms of UX, when I look at a list of long storing apples, I really want to see how long they store. You don’t really provide that metric on the site, or it’s hidden in some descriptions. What I see from your table is information on how how long I can leave apples on a tree in a mild temperate climate if I want to eat them immediately.
You are, of course, correct. That is the info the site provides. However, the site is a work in progress. I do not list the storage date because I do not have that information. My trees are young yet, once I get apples I will be able to conduct storage tests and report on the data I have personally observed.
If one wishes to identify apples that store well one can dig about on the internet and in pomologies and report what other people have said. But then experimentally the most you can do is reproduce other peoples results on the apples they happened to have tested. Alternatively, one can select a criterion likely to be associated with long storing, obtain the apple trees, and test a whole bunch of new ones.
I must say that the metric you are using is flawed. It is not even a correlation, if you are thinking beyond January, which is not loong storage in my book.
Again, you are correct, January is not much for storing and my site saying it the apple stays on the tree until then is really more of a minimum indicator. If the apple is on the tree in a healthy state until January it is more likely not to be mush if picked in October and stored until January. There are no sure things but I think there will be a correlation there.
Thank you for your excellent file - never seen one as good as that before. I have taken your advice and processed it by running the names against my database. I will report on the results in my next post.
So, is there a correlation between the ability of an apple to stay on the tree and its ability to store well? Since @Tana posted that excellent link I thought I would take his suggestion and match what the data on the link says with what is in my database. The results are very interesting.
The link lists 500 distinct apples that have storage information associated with them. I took those names (and their aliases) and found there were 30 matching entries in my LongKeepingApples.com database. Of those 30 only 2 did not have a “seen on the tree date” earlier than the “storage date” listed on the page and those 2 were only off by a month. (I am excluding Juno from the results because it says it stores “until the end of August” and I am unsure how to interpret that).
So, while these results are not definitive it seems there is a fairly strong correlation between “last date seen hanging on the tree” and probable long storing characteristics. Note that many of the storing dates reported in the web link are far in excess of the “seen on the tree date” so the most one can infer from a “hanging on the tree date” is a probable minimum storage date. This is kind of interesting I think.
If the correlation holds up, it implies that many of the 300 varieties documented on the LKA website could be good, previously undocumented, long storing apple candidates.
For the record here are the 30 Apple varieties. The second column is the reported storing date from the link provided by @Tana and the third column is the “last seen on the tree date” observed by myself.
Admiral until the end of May 01-Mar
Auralia until March 01-Jan
Braeburn until May to June 02-Feb
Edward VII until the end of April 01-Jan
Elise Rathke until December 01-Jan
Elstar from November to March 01-Dec
Fireside until March and beyond 01-Mar
Fuji until April to May 02-Feb
Fukunishiki until January 01-Jan
Fukutami until January 02-Feb
Gascoynes Scarlet until December to March 01-Jan
Idared until March to May 01-Jan
Ingrid Marie until December to February 01-Jan
Jonathan until February to May and longer 01-Jan
Juno until the end of August 04-Feb
Lobo until December, January and beyond 01-Dec
Melon until May to June 01-Jan
Melon until October to the end of December 01-Jan
Melrose until March to April 01-Jan
Montfort from January to June 01-Jan
Mutsu until March to April 01-Dec
Nonpareil until April to May 01-Dec
Ontario from March to June 04-Feb
Orleans until March 01-Dec
Pilot until March 04-Feb
Rubens from January to May 01-Dec
Scarlet Pearmain until November to December 01-Dec
Sir Prize until March and beyond 01-Jan
Spencer until April 01-Dec
Wolf River until January 01-Dec
How about we start our own list of our best keepers. For me, Pink Lady is the best with Fuji and Goldrush not far behind. Because I use Jonagold a lot for culinary purposes it doesn’t matter that it looses crunch by March, it is still a very useful apple in the spring. I can say the same for Yellow Delicious- old strain.
The South is loaded with many fine long storage apples. Meaning April, May and June. Some are not very fine tasters though. I’m very excited to be getting Shockley Cantrell and Shockley Grizzle next year. The first a big flavor boost over it’s parent. And Grizzle was bred to retain the flavor and increase size. Plus Cooper’s Red, another Shockley seedling. All store well into spring.
There are several deer forums that discuss long hanging fruit that drop off trees once deer season is underway. They aren’t interested in flavor or culinary uses of course.