Apple picking around Canberra?

clp said :

Can’t you pick your own apples at Pialligo?

There is one orchard who does pick-it-yourself, but this season they lost pretty much all their crop to birds.

m@ said :

clp said :

Can’t you pick your own apples at Pialligo?

There are a few orchards advertising pick-your-own, but the place I’ve been to had codlin grubs in just about every apple and pretty steep prices to boot 🙁

In past years they’ve let me collect fallen peaches for chutney, but last year wanted to charge me their standard price for fallen fruit – so don’t think I’ll bother at all this year.

No orchard that actually cares about its fruit, and trees, is going to let the public shred the trees.

clp said :

Can’t you pick your own apples at Pialligo?

There are a few orchards advertising pick-your-own, but the place I’ve been to had codlin grubs in just about every apple and pretty steep prices to boot 🙁

In past years they’ve let me collect fallen peaches for chutney, but last year wanted to charge me their standard price for fallen fruit – so don’t think I’ll bother at all this year.

There are cooking grade wild apple trees on the Old Hume Highway out from Gunning.
Fastest way is Sutton – Gundaroo – Gunning so plenty of places for child breaks.

I can see your dilemma; it’ll take a lot longer than an hour to drive to 2003…

Watson said :

Thanks p1. Doesn’t have to be a proper orchard indeed. Though I did find an apple tree at the foot of Mt Pleasant and the apples seemed to rot before they were ripe. I suppose you have to be a bit lucky to find a good one.

So I might go check out those trees soon.

EJ, I did get that exact response from Loriendale after I emailed them this morning. Such a pity… It may mean we will have to make do with the ‘wild trees’. Until I plant my own in my tiny Gungahlin backyard next year! 😀

Have picked all mine from my tiny Gungahlin back yard :-p
Meanwhile, both my apple trees are flowering again – what’s that about??

There are some mangy apple trees behind the old Downer shops. Might be worth a look, after all the rain this year they might have had a good season.

Can’t you pick your own apples at Pialligo?

Watson if you decide to travel further, Batlow near Tumut is excellent, the Johnnie’s are out this season if you enjoy them!

Russ said :

As Evan mentioned, most commercial orchards don’t let people pick their own for a couple of reasons – they don’t know how to pick apples so they both damage the tree and they bruise the fruit. Secondly, if any get on ladders, there’s a strong chance of them falling off; and finally, and probably most importantly, most don’t know what varieties ripen when, and can’t tell if an apple is ripe.

In a tree-ripened orchard, every tree gets picked over about 5-7 times with only the ripe fruit at the time being harvested, and even experienced pickers have a hard time determining ripeness of some varieties.

So while pick-it-yourself may provide a great experience for kids, it most likely leads to people leaving the orchard with under- or over-ripe fruit that has finger bruises which will show up a day later, with the result that the consumer associates the orchard with sub-standard fruit.

I have great memories as a kid picking apples – often in the centre of the city. Probably highly toxic due to the traffic fumes, but it clearly didn’t kill me. I used to prefer slightly unripe apples over ripe ones too.

So it definitely sounds like road-side trees is the go.