Building a rustic fruit store for winter apples

Why a purpose-built store beats a corner of the garage

By the middle of October, most of us have the same problem: more apples than we can reasonably eat and nowhere sensible to put them. Leave them in a bucket in the kitchen and they will be soft and mouldy by Bonfire Night. Tip them into a shed with no protection and the mice will find them within a week. A simple set of slatted wooden boxes, kept in a cool, frost-free shed, turns a glut into four or five months of good eating. It costs an afternoon's work and a few metres of softwood, and it is far kinder to your back than lugging crates up to the loft.

The principle is old and simple. Apples need cold, dark, damp air moving gently around them, and they need to be looked at often enough that one bad fruit does not spoil a boxful. Everything below is aimed at those three things.

Choosing and preparing the shed

A north-facing shed, outbuilding or unheated garage corner is ideal. You are looking for somewhere that stays between about 3°C and 7°C for most of the winter — cold enough to slow ripening, warm enough that the fruit does not freeze and turn to mush. Frost is the real enemy: once an apple is frozen solid, the cells break down and it will collapse when it thaws, so a shed that dips several degrees below zero on a clear January night needs attention.

• Ventilate gently, with a slatted opening low down on one side and another high up on the opposite side. That gives a slow through-draught without a gale.
• Cover both vents with fine galvanised mesh to keep mice out.
• Fit a solid door that closes properly and keeps the shed dark. Light encourages sprouting and greening.
• Keep the fruit off the floor on pallets or bricks, with at least 10cm of air underneath, and leave a 5cm gap between boxes and the walls — damp collects in corners.
• Never store apples alongside paint, petrol, onions or potatoes. They will take up taint and the other produce will suffer from the ethylene the apples give off.

Making the slatted boxes

Untreated softwood is perfect. Rough-sawn pine or spruce slats, about 15mm thick, are cheap and last for years. Aim for a box roughly 50cm long, 35cm wide and 15cm deep — big enough to hold a comfortable couple of layers of fruit without being heavy when full.

• Cut the base slats to length and nail them down with 20–25mm gaps between them. Air must move up through the bottom.
• Build the sides from three slats per side, again with 20mm gaps, fixed to corner battens of about 40mm square.
• Use galvanised nails so they do not rust in the damp, and sand any rough edges that could bruise a fruit.
• Stack the boxes in towers of four or five, resting each on two thin battens laid across the one below so the air can travel between them.
• If you have the space, a simple rack of uprights and rails is even better, as every box can be slid out and inspected without disturbing the tower.

Picking, sorting and laying down the fruit

Only late keepers are worth storing. Bramley, Ashmead's Kernel, Newton Wonder, D'Arcy Spice, Egremont Russet and Orleans Reinette will all sit happily into the new year and beyond. Early and mid-season varieties such as Discovery are best eaten straight from the tree.

Pick on a dry day, when the fruit comes away with a gentle twist and the stalk stays intact. Handle each apple as though it were an egg — a bruise you can barely see in October becomes a rotten patch by December. Sort as you go: any fruit with a codling moth hole, a wasp sting or a soft spot should be eaten, juiced or given to the pigs rather than stored.

Lay the apples in single layers or, at most, two deep. Wrapping each one in a square of newspaper slows the spread of rot between neighbours and holds a little moisture around the skin. Keep varieties in separate boxes, as they ripen at different rates.

The weekly check that saves the crop

This is the part most people skip, and it is the part that matters. Go through every box every seven to ten days, lifting the fruit gently and looking at the underside. Brown rot spreads by contact, and one affected apple can mark half a box within a fortnight. Take out anything soft, brown or smelling sweet and put it straight into a lidded bucket well away from the shed. Do not simply drop it on the compost heap next to the door.

Rot moves quickly above 10°C and slows markedly below 5°C, so a cold snap is your friend. Keep a notebook and pencil on a nail by the door, and jot down dates, losses and which varieties are keeping best. After two or three seasons you will know exactly which trees earn their space.

Keeping mice, frost and rot at bay

Mice are the greatest threat to a winter store. Set traps along the walls, keep the grass and rubbish down outside, and stand rack legs in old tins or jars so they cannot be climbed. Poison is best avoided where children, dogs, cats or owls might reach it. Check the mesh over your vents each autumn, and look for droppings whenever you do your weekly round.

For frost, improve the shed rather than adding heat. Line the roof and any single-skin walls with board or insulation, and on a forecast hard night drape old blankets or cardboard over the top of the stack — but leave the sides open so the air still moves. A bowl of damp sand on the floor helps if the shed is very dry, as shrivelling apples mean the air is too warm or too thirsty. Get those basics right and you will be eating crisp, sharp, home-grown apples well into March.