Coco Ranch in Davis, CA grows beautiful organic apples. More about Coco Ranch here.
Here are their tips on apple storage:
High-tech home storage:
- Empty crisper bin in your refrigerator.
- Fill with apples.
Our dense, long-season varieties such as Fuji, Granny Smith, and Cripps Pink, picked at full maturity, will keep for months. The earlier, shorter-season apples such as Gala, Sommerfeld, and Braeburn, which are less dense and have lower acid, do not hold up well in storage. If your household has a second refrigerator you can manage especially for apples, set the temperature to 34°F, the ideal storage temperature. But be careful not to let the apples freeze or they will be ruined.
Low-tech home storage:
- Put your box or basket of apples in your garage, preferably on the cool concrete slab floor.
This is what we do. We wish we had a basement or a root cellar, but we haven’t, and there isn’t a stitch of room in the refrigerator. We have enjoyed our Fuji, Granny Smith, and Cripps Pink apples, left simply in boxes in the garage, as late as March. Their character slowly changes and develops as they sit and respire. The skins wrinkle, the natural waxy coating on the apples increases, but they are aromatic, flavorful, sweet, and even crunchy on the inside. As the winter months go by we find we eat fewer of them out of hand and cook more of them, fried for breakfast, as applesauce quickly made for dinner, stuffed with raisins, honey, and nuts baked for dessert, or in a pie or tart for a treat.”
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