How to Store Apples & Pears for Winter: Picking, Curing & Keeping Your Harvest

Somewhere in every autumn garden is a crate, a loft floor or a spare shelf quietly filling with apples and pears — and a nagging sense that half of them will be soft and brown by Christmas. They don't have to be. A ripe apple stored the right way can still be crisp at Easter, and the difference between that and a mouldy crate by November comes down to a handful of habits: how the fruit is picked, how it is laid out, and — the part almost everyone gets wrong — keeping apples and pears apart.

• Pick apples when they lift and twist off easily · pears while still hard and green
• Store at 2–5 °C · dark, humid, well ventilated
• Never wash before storing, or store a bruised or damaged fruit
• Keeps early apples a few weeks · late keepers 3–5 months · pears usually weeks, not months

Picking at the right moment

Apples and pears are picked in almost opposite states of ripeness, which is the first thing to get right. An apple is ready when it parts from the branch with a simple lift-and-twist: cup the fruit in your palm, tilt it horizontally, and if it comes away cleanly, stalk attached, it is ripe. If you have to tug or wrench it, give it another few days. Early varieties are ready from late summer and do not keep; mid-season apples follow through September; the latest, firmest varieties — the traditional "keepers" — are picked last, often into October, and are the ones worth storing for winter.

Pears are the opposite. Left to ripen fully on the tree, most varieties turn gritty and mealy at the core before the outside looks ready at all. Instead, pick them while still hard and dark green, as soon as the fruit tilts easily upward off the spur — a week or two before you would judge them ripe by eye. They then finish ripening off the tree, either in store or, in the final days before eating, on a warm windowsill.

Why apples and pears can't share a shelf

Both fruits ripen by releasing ethylene, a gas that also triggers ripening in whatever sits nearby — but apples produce far more of it than pears. Store the two together and the pears soften and spoil within days, long before the apples are ready. Keep them in separate boxes, or at least separate trays with air between them; the same rule protects stored potatoes, which sprout faster next to apples than almost anywhere else in the shed.

How to store apples and pears, step by step

1. Pick on a dry day Damp fruit picked after rain is more likely to rot in store. Handle every apple and pear as if it bruises like an egg — because it does.
2. Sort ruthlessly Any fruit that is bruised, split, wormy or windfall-damaged goes into the kitchen for eating or cooking this week, never into store. One rotting apple genuinely does spoil the box around it.
3. Don't wash The natural bloom on the skin is a protective layer. A quick wipe of loose dirt with a dry cloth is fine; standing water is not.
4. Lay fruit so it isn't touching A shallow tray or box lined with newspaper, one layer deep, fruit not quite touching its neighbours — or wrap each apple individually in a twist of newspaper, which stops one going bad from spreading to the rest.
5. Keep it cold, dark and a little humid A shed, garage, loft or unheated cellar at 2–5 °C is ideal — cold enough to slow ripening right down, but frost-free. Too dry and the fruit shrivels; a few centimetres of slightly damp sand in the bottom of the box, or an occasional light misting of the shed floor, helps hold humidity.
6. Check weekly and remove casualties at once Go through every box once a week through winter and pull out anything softening or spotting before it takes its neighbours with it.

Common mistakes

• Storing apples and pears in the same box. The ethylene from the apples ripens the pears within days.
• Washing the fruit before storing. It strips the natural bloom and leaves moisture that encourages rot.
• Packing bruised fruit "to use up first". It rots first, and takes the box with it — eat or cook it separately instead.
• A store that's too warm. A garage that gets warm on sunny winter days ripens fruit far faster than a genuinely cold shed or cellar.
• Leaving pears until they feel ripe on the tree. By then the flesh is often already breaking down from the core outward.

Frequently asked questions

Why do my stored pears go brown and mealy inside?
Almost always because they were left to ripen on the tree instead of being picked hard and finished indoors. Once a pear's core starts to break down it cannot be reversed, so pick a little earlier next year and bring them to room temperature only a few days before eating.

Can I store apples and pears together if space is tight?
Better not to. If you only have one cold store, keep them in separate boxes on separate shelves with good airflow between them, and check the pears more often — they will still ripen faster than apples in the same room.

How do I know when an apple is ready to pick?
Cup the fruit, tilt it horizontally and give it a gentle twist. A ripe apple comes away cleanly with its stalk; one that needs pulling or wrenching isn't ready yet. Windfalls are also a clue that picking time has arrived.

How long do stored apples actually last?
It depends entirely on the variety. Early, thin-skinned apples are best eaten within weeks and don't store well at all; the firm, late-picked "keeper" types bred for storage can hold for three to five months in a cold, dark shed, sometimes into spring.

A cold shed, a few shallow boxes and ten minutes a week checking for casualties is all it takes to turn one autumn's fruit into a winter's worth of eating. While the crates are filling, it's also the moment to plan next year's kitchen garden — our new guide to growing tomatoes from seed is a good place to start, or bring some homegrown fruit into the mix with our guide to growing alpine strawberries from seed. Browse the strawberry, melon and rhubarb seed ranges, the full vegetable seed collection, or explore the rest of our growing guides library.