How do I know when apples are ready to pick?

Picking is the one job in the fruit year where a week either way changes everything. Picked too early, apples are starchy, they shrivel in store and never develop flavour. Picked too late, they go mealy on the tree, bruise at a touch and rot within weeks. And the target is different for each variety: early apples are picked ready to eat, late keepers are picked deliberately firm and finish ripening in store.

Step by step

1. Know which kind of apple you have.Earlies ripen in August, are eaten within days and will not keep. Mid-season apples ripen in September and last a few weeks. Late keepers are picked in October, firm and slightly under-ripe, and store for months. The right picking stage is different for each.
2. Do the lift-and-twist test.Cup the apple in your palm — do not grip it with fingertips. Lift so the stalk swings up towards horizontal and twist very slightly. Ready fruit parts at the spur with the stalk still attached to the apple.
3. Read the result honestly.Comes away easily: ready. Holds on and needs a real pull: leave it a week. The whole spur tears off the branch: far too early, and you have lost that spur's future crops. The stalk stays behind on the tree: eat that one soon, because the wound lets rot in.
4. Cut one open and look at the pips.Pips go from white through pale brown to dark brown as the fruit matures. Dark brown pips confirm the tree is ready. It is a good cross-check on a variety you do not know.
5. Look at the ground colour rather than the red.The red flush comes with sun exposure and says little about ripeness. The background colour changes from grass-green to a paler green or yellow as the apple matures, and that is the more reliable signal.
6. Pick the tree over two or three visits.The outside and the sunny side ripen first. Go over the tree at intervals of a week or so across two or three weeks rather than stripping it in one go.
7. Ignore the windfalls as a ripeness signal.Fruit on the ground in August usually means codling moth grubs, wind, or a growth check — not that the crop is ready.
8. Handle every apple as if it bruises, because it does.Lay them in a shallow tray rather than tipping them into a bucket. A bruise you cannot see is where rot starts in store.
9. Sort as you pick.Perfect, stalked, unblemished fruit into the storing tray. Anything bruised, split, grubby, scabbed or stalkless into the use-now basket.

Tips

• The pips test is the quickest way to settle an argument about whether a tree is ready.
• If a variety is unknown, pick two apples a week apart and taste them. The tree will tell you within a fortnight.
• Late keepers such as Bramley, Newton Wonder and Ashmead's Kernel taste sharp and hard straight off the tree and are supposed to. They come into their own after a month or two in store.
• Pick on a dry day. Wet fruit stored damp rots much faster.
• Pears are the exception to almost all of this and are picked before they are ripe — see the pear guide.

Common mistakes

• Pulling apples straight down off the branch — It tears the spur off, which removes a permanent fruiting point that would have cropped for many years. Lift and twist instead.
• Stripping the whole tree in one session — Half of it is not ready. Picking over two or three visits gives better fruit and a longer eating season.
• Storing apples without stalks — The stalk wound is an open route for rot. Stalkless fruit is for eating now.
• Judging ripeness by red colour — Red develops with sun exposure, not maturity. Two apples on the same tree can be equally red and a fortnight apart in readiness.

Questions people ask