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Have you started picking any fruit at your place? Are you confident you know how to do it the right way? Gardeners often pay too little attention to this part of the growing cycle, but in fact, it’s one of the 10 steps to ultimate fruit tree care.

Depending on where you live, you might have loquats, berries, apricots, cherries, or peaches ripe by mid-spring.

In a normal season at our place, we start picking cherries, loquats, and some of the berries in mid-November, with the first apricots and peaches ripening soon after.

Switching into harvest mode means it’s time to start paying attention to a few different things, so this week we’re helping you to refocus your attention.

Getting a good return on your investment by picking fruit correctly

Harvest really is one of the key times of the fruit season. It’s when you convert all the hard work you’ve done the rest of the year into a yield.

The main yield (obviously) is fruit. If you’re aiming to make money from your fruit growing it’s also when you convert your work into the money that will help to sustain your family for the year.

But even if you’re growing on a smaller scale, it’s still really important to get a good return. You need to get something in exchange for the time, care, and love you’ve poured into your fruit trees.

And even though you may not sell your fruit, it may still reap other rewards. It can be converted into different produce by swapping with friends and neighbours, or goodwill by sharing it with family.

Guidelines for getting the most from your harvest

1. Monitor when the fruit is ripe and ready to pick: One of the signals we look for on the farm is waiting until one or two pieces of fruit have fallen because of ripeness. However, it’s also important to taste them!). Don’t pick your fruit too early, because it grows in size a lot in the last couple of weeks on the tree. Getting the picking time right is an art, and can take quite a lot of experience to learn. The characteristics to look for are specific to each fruit type, as we explain in this course.
2. Don’t pick fruit before it’s mature: fruit picked before it’s mature won’t ripen properly off the tree.
3. Don’t let fruit get too ripe: ideally the fruit should be almost ripe (but not over-ripe). The riper it is, the more carefully you need to pick. Aim to avoid picking injuries that can dramatically reduce storage life of the fruit.
4. Pick up any ripe fruit that has fallen onto the ground: this is one of the basic hygiene practices that can help to keep pests and diseases at bay, as many of them find their perfect habitat in fruit that is rotting on the ground.
5. Never leave fruit in the sun after picking. Keep the container that you’re picking into in the shade or covered with something to shade it the entire time.
6. Cool fruit as quickly as possible after picking: this help fruit keep for longer and retain freshness.

There’s definitely more involved in picking fruit correctly than most people realise.

Too often we see a year’s worth of work wasted by picking fruit too green or over-ripe. And it’s such a disappointment when fruit goes bad within days of being picked just because of poor technique.

A little knowledge and planning can make a huge difference to the outcome of your fruit season!