Helpful tips for fruit harvesting

Anyone who has ever picked their own fruit or tasted homemade jam from grandma knows that fruit from your own garden simply tastes better. But harvesting and storing fruit can seem a little complicated. We will now tell you what you need to bear in mind.

Harvest time

Harvest time always depends on the variety. Rhubarb, apricots, and strawberries, for example, are already ripe in spring from April or May. Cherries and gooseberries can also be picked as early as June. Berries and peaches taste best when harvested in mid-summer. However, you should wait until autumn before harvesting plums, grapes, apples and pears to get the fullest flavour of the fruit.

What do I have to know before harvesting fruit?

To avoid damaging the trees and to ensure next year's fruit harvest, apples and pears should be lifted or turned slightly in order to pick them. When doing so, the stem should separate from the fruit tree. Strong tugging should be avoided, as the woody plant can be injured. If the fruit can be picked gently from the tree in this way, the right time for harvesting has been reached. This is particularly important with these types of fruit, because if they are harvested too early, they quickly start to shrivel. If you wait too long, the fruit will rot more quickly and will also not keep as long as they could.

The right storage

Many apple varieties need to ripen further because otherwise they are often still very sour. It is therefore important to store apples properly. Since pressure marks contribute to rotting, you should take care to place the fruit carefully in the fruit basket as soon as you pick it. Every bruise and scratch reduces the storage time. The apples should then be kept in a cool, dark room at about two to six degrees Celsius and a relatively high humidity of 80 to 90 percent. It is also important that the room in which you store the fruit is well ventilated. Fruit and vegetables should be kept separate so that the taste is not affected by ripening gases.

However, not all fruit needs to ripen. Plums and cherries, for example, are already edible after harvesting. Pears do not have to be stored for long either. If you still want to store them for a few months, you should harvest the fruit a little earlier.

If there are several trees in your garden, you might feel overwhelmed by the number of fruit that you harvest. But with the right storage, apples in particular can be kept for a very long time. You can pick up fallen fruit and process it into juices or jams. Preparing apple juice, for example, is easy and doesn't take much time either - it's worth making a large quantity in one go.

Safely up high with HAILO

Harvesting fruit can be a little difficult, especially when the tree is very high, in which case your ladder can become quite wobbly. With the S100 ProfiLOT range from HAILO, you can reach heights safely. Thanks to the LOT system, unevenness is no longer a problem: you can compensate for up to 15cm. In addition, the large feet ensure maximum stability and prevent the ladder from slipping.