I still have some Fuji, Pink Lady and Goldrush on my trees and it’s forecast to be 18 degrees this weekend! Can apples on the tree survive that low of a temperature or will they be ruined?
Thanks!
I think low 20s is the coldest my apples, Pink Lady, survived seemingly undamaged. So I can’t answer your question. My guess is they’ll still be eatable but probably not store for long. Let us know what happens.
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Thanks! I’ll probably pull 90% of them just to be safe and leave the rest as an experiment.
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I’m in a similar boat. It’s supposed to drop to 22 F Friday morning, with a high of 27 that day, then dropping back to 23 Friday night and Saturday morning. I’m thinking this is too cold for my Sundance and GoldRush apples. Maybe the GoldRush could handle it for a few hours, but I’m thinking the high of only 27 during the day then back down to 23 is too cold for too long.
I know @alan says GoldRush can handle low 20s, so maybe I’ll leave some on the tree to see what happens.
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My bet is that the Rush will hold their texture fine. It really doesn’t take very long for an apple to get as cold as it is going to get- I wouldn’t be surprised if you could store Rush at 22. Of course, it would depend on how high the brix.
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Call me chicken. Temp went down to 26 F this morning. I pulled off all my Gold Rush.
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Today I picked my last Jonagold off the tree and it held up nicely. We’ve had a few weeks now of temps dropping into the middle 20’s and a few somewhat lower. Flavor may have mellowed somewhat but was still intense, if anything somewhat pear-like, to my surprise. Don’t know how well it might of kept, but it was good today!
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I could not get to one still loaded tree yesterday, and it went down to about 20. But it is fairly high on a slope, so I have some hopes, this evening I will strip it as much as possible.
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I harvested all but a dozen or so of our GoldRush and Sundance apples last night. It dropped to 22 and we got 2 inches of snow. I will be thinning more next year in hopes of getting a larger percentage of well ripened fruit, especially from Sundance on g.30. I’m afraid I might have tripped it into going biennial this year… We’ll see what next year holds.
I picked a Granny Smith three days ago after a night in the mid 20’s and it was fine. I probably could have left it on, but it might get into the teens tonight so I only could have got another few days out of it anyway. It tasted very good but brix was only 14. Even so, I’d be happy to get more just like it next year.
We had a number of low 20’s in Oct. And several mid teens this month and the half dozen small Black Oxfords i’d left on the tree did fine. I’ll save a few to see how they store compared to most of the crop I picked earlier. I picked those last ones when they predicted single digits. But it only got down to 10 last night. Cold enough though. Thankfully we had gotten about 4" of snow, too.
well it did go down to 17 and the apples were throughly frozen. total loss.
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Ouch.
21F expected tomorrow morning here so I just harvested all my Yates apples (the other varieties are long gone). They will need to store for awhile as they are still not optimally ripe. I also grabbed the remaining kiwis and persimmons. The kiwis really don’t like getting frozen.
I left some lesser quality Goldrush and a mystery apple on the trees and they got ruined. I was going to add to my cider, but didn’t trust the flavor they had.
Ruined at what temp, John?
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Didn’t check temps last night.
I picked mine Thurs am when it hit 26 F and hard frost covered everything.
Fri am was 23F and this morning was 19F. Yours may have been in the 20’s.
My site apparently hit 17 (according to my therm in a cold spot), which is 2 degrees above predictions. Haven’t checked the few apples I left on the trees. I have bushels in my basement. Wish more of my Rush had turned yellow.
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Yes, I’m sure we were a little warmer on the coast here than you.