Projects for Self Sufficiency had a picture of the rack right on the cover, and flipping through I found plans for literally dozens of other handy things. I spotted pictures of a really innovative storage rack in my friend Terry’s Root Cellaring Book, and I knew that I just had to build something like that for my own basement.Ī few weeks later, I ran across a book with plans. The first year, I simply used cardboard boxes, but this year I got inspired to try a more elegant solution… Even if you don’t happen to have a backyard tree, you can still head down to the pick your own and harvest a winter’s worth of apples.įor us though, Newton Pippins are prolific producers, we harvested literally hundreds of pounds from a single tree and had to find some way to store it for the winter. Other common apple and pear varieties also happen to store well, namely Honeycrisp apples (up to 8 months) and bartlett pears (up to 5 months harvested underripe). In fact, they taste pretty darn horrible until they’ve been stored at least 3 months, and then they’re absolutely fabulous. Known as Newton Pippin apples, they’re some of the very best storage apples and can keep for 12-14 months in the right conditions. They tasted more or less like styrofoam until January…and then they came into their own. We pulled them before the first snows and packed them into the basement. In late October, the fruits still weren’t quite ripe. Right next to it we found an apple with just the opposite characteristics. Just as the last of the winter storage apples are fading in the root cellar, this one gives you a shot of apple goodness right in the heat of summer (before the raspberries and other summer fruits). While it doesn’t store, historically it was an important part of growing fresh fruit year-round. This summer apple is known as Yellow Transparent. The apples were in their prime in July and faded quickly after. One produced apples faster than I’d ever seen, going from blossom to fully formed fruit in about 6-8 weeks. Definitly intentionally planted and tended by the previous owners, these trees were chosen for a reason. There were quite a few apple trees on the land, but two varieties really stood out. When we moved to our homestead a decade ago, we more or less stumbled onto storage apples. Kept in a cool location (like a basement or back closet), many apple varieties will store for 6 months or more. A homemade apple storage rack is the perfect way to store a winter’s worth of fresh fruit.