Despite the wash out summer apple growers started harvesting Cox orchards destined for long term storage in the last week of August, the earliest Cox picking date ever recorded.
This August harvest date was predicted as early as June by the FAST formula. According to Farm Advisory Services Team’s managing director, Tim Biddlecombe, the FAST formula computed August 28 as the optimum for long term Cox thus giving apple growers what has proved to be a very useful warning to get prepared early. “All fruit crops have been early this year with soft fruits and stone fruits up to 7 to ten days earlier than usual and this has carried on into apples, says Biddlecombe. “The effect of the unprecedented temperatures during the heat wave in April carried right through the season.”
The Quality Fruit Group’s third Newsletter dated August 24 sent to all growers confirms by its maturity testing that it is a very early season and it stresses the need for growers to test each individual orchard for maturity to ensure correct picking dates. Overall the Quality Fruit Group advises that for Cox “the date by which the average site must be picked for long term storage should be September 2”. Despite this warning some farms may struggle to achieve this as the pear crop and Bramleys are still being picked and there are some concerns over a shortfall of pickers.
Tony Harding, technologist for Worldwide Fruits, touring Kent orchards on Friday reported that the earliest sites in Kent had started picking on August 24 and that most farms with Cox for long term stores would finish picking by the end of the first week of September. Harding’s prediction for this year’s crop was that Cox quality is looking good with excellent skin finish, good colour helped by the recent cold nights and a ‘nice spread of sizes.’ There was some concern that lower Brix readings were due to heavy rain in August and may impair eating quality, however, acidity was also lower so the sugar/acid balance may still turn out alright. Overall there is a good crop of Cox around the country.
Cox picking started on Thursday on one of the largest apple farms in Kent, Gaskains Ltd. The farm grows 1,250 acres of apples in total of which 400 acres is Cox in and around the village of Selling near Faversham. Using the picking train system introduced last year where 8 pickers per train are always picking with 5 bins per train constantly available to fill in the row. Using a very professional and highly organised picking team system, 200 people can harvest 250 bins of Cox a day so the long term crop (15,000 bins in total) will all be in store by the end of this week.
Chairman, Charles Gaskain, thinks the early harvest is an advantage as many of his student pickers need to get home for university courses starting in mid September. As a big soft fruit producer he has no problem with picker numbers and is confident that although not representing a cost saving, the picking trains have significantly improved quality and reduce the amount of “rubbish fruit” in the bin. Looking back to April Gaskain said he had never known all tree crops to flower at the same time - “apples, pears and plums were all in blossom at once. This early boost gave us much earlier cell division and then the rest of the summer allowed the apple crop to mature slowly giving us a lovely crop, not a bumper year but an above average one.”
Sandys Dawes now grows only 12 acres of Cox as he has replaced the original 50 acres plus with newer varieties like Braeburn on his top and soft fruit farm near Faversham at Hernhill. Picking started last Friday which old hands on the usually early farm found quite confusing - one supervisor admitted she would normally still be picking Victoria plums at this time. Sandys Dawes was pleased to have such good advance warning of the early apple harvest from FAST. “Getting that best guesstimate months ago was very helpful but I would also like to see the same for the plum harvest which seemed to catch us all out this year”, he said. “If we could do this for plums we could have warned the supermarkets to be ready for English plums and switch from foreign supplies.”
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