White Jersey

General Fruit Growing
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I’m growing a bunch of apple varieties for cider. One is White Jersey (an English bittersweet), which I planted after reading that it has worked well for growers in the northern U.S. My tree, which I grafted myself onto MM.111, has grown well and is loaded with fruit.

I’m looking for guidance on the harvest.

The reason is that just a few days ago, the tree started dropping apples. Reportedly this is typical of White Jersey as it approaches ripeness. But there are few drops from my other trees and, according to what I’ve read, the apples on White Jersey won’t be truly ripe until mid-Sept.

I gathered roughly 50 apples off the ground, a small fraction of what remains on the tree. Most are still green, some are yellow. I starch-tested one of each. The green apple is definitely still high in starch (black surface); but the yellow one is looking ripe.

I’m assuming that the drops are happening mostly because the apples are growing and clusters of apples are getting crowded so some individual apples are just getting squeezed out. In any case, I won’t begin picking without starch-testing applies from the tree.

Meanwhile, does anybody have any insights regarding White Jersey that may help me determine when to pick and how to handle the apples after?

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Early drop on bittersweets can be frustrating to read. Cutting one open and checking if the seeds have gone brown is usually the most reliable sign for me, more so than just watching drops. If the seeds are still pale it’s worth waiting a bit longer even with drops happening.

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@Joao – Thanks. I should have mentioned that the seeds were all brown on both apples that I tested. As expected, the yellow one was sweeter than the green one, suggesting that it was further along in the transformation of starch to sugar.

FWIW, there were more apples on the ground today.

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