Apple man tells secrets of luscious, delicious apples

Secrets of luscious, delicious apples include growing them and storing them according to Paul Thelen of Berrien Springs, Mi.  He is one of the newest vendors in the Logan Square Farmers' Market which will have its last winter Sunday market in the Congress Theater on March 28.

Keeping the trees smaller so the light and spray can get to all the leaves is step one in the growing cycle.  Pruning in the spring and summer helps restrict the trees' growth.  Being "organic" may not always mean what you think it might mean according to Thelen.  Though lead arsenic, an organic material, is now band from being used on food, oil, which can be used, is a petroleum.  At Paul and Sarah Thelen's Hillside Orchards, they use integrated pest management. 

"We do not spray if we do not have to.  We are in a humid versus hot and dry area.  When it rains, it can result in insect hatching or fungal infections.  As long as it is not just before harvesting, we use organic or other safe materials," Thelen explains. "There is not enough organic material available to be all organic.  Primarily we use copper until the green tip (leaves) are about a quarter inch long.  You can not continue to use that beyond the quarter inch growth because leaves can get photo toxicity." 

"Sulphur can be used, but then the apples have to be sprayed more often.  It washes off and requires more, fuel, time and material costs.  In addition it causes more wear and tear on the orchard.  If you do that just before the workers go in the fields to pick, they can get burned.  So insecticide soaps are used if necessary." 

When it comes to harvesting, some apples such as Honey Crisp, Sun Gold and Macintosh are hand picked and packed because they bruise too easily while others are washed or brushed by machines.  If put in water, good apples float while bad fall to the bottom.

Though Hillside Orchards does not wax their apples, those growers that do are doing so to keep in the apple's moisture.  In fact, apples produce their own wax.  They are naturally shiny for the first week or two but then they start getting dull.  That is the wax.  When it feels greasy or oily, it is over ripe.

Storage is the key to keeping apples luscious and delicious.  The Thelen's  use refrigeration and controlled environments.  In both cases they are at the same temperature and humidity but the controlled room is completely sealed. Nitrogen is added to the room until there is only about one to one and a half percent of oxygen in the room.  The other room can be entered at any time while the controlled room takes about ninety days before anyone can enter the room once they start bringing it back to a regular atmosphere.  This type of storage means the apples taste as though they were just picked from the trees. 

On about 100 acres, the Thelen's have approximately fifteen to twenty types of apples on fifteen acres, chestnuts on another twenty acres, peaches on eight to ten acres, sweet cherries on two with the remaining acreage producing apricots, blue berries, raspberries and nectarines.  They have been reducing the farming acreage because they want to sell directly to consumers, eliminating wholesalers and processors.

Hillside Orchards is in the Green City Market in Lincoln Park all year around and now in the Logan Square Farmers' Market.  Paul grew up on a farm but made a career change to farming his wife's family farm after being laid off from Clark Equipment in 1975.

Editor's note:  Honey Crisp is my favorite apple. I do not believe I have ever had any as crisp and juicy as those I purchased last week from Hillside.