this week I want to show you how to pick fruit whether it's plums apples pears I want to show you some basic techniques what to do what not to do just to enjoy your outing stay tuned I know what you're thinking who doesn't know how to pick fruit well being able to pick fruit and being able to pick fruit without causing damage are two different things the reason people stopped doing you pigs is because they get tired of seeing all these broken Spurs because people were picking and oh you know or picton you know hey I picked I broke off the Spurs this is your future production this is where you should have fruit for the next five years if you own the orchard and you see this kind of damage you go yeah you know what no I'll pick it myself but I don't want all this damage so I just want to show you today how simple it is to pick fruit without causing damage so to start you have to understand how did the fruit even get there it starts with the flower so the flowers are always pointing up right trying to attract the attention of the bees then they form little fruitlets and as the fruit gets bigger and bigger and heavier they start to come down underneath the Spurs or branches so to pick them the key is you really just want to go in the opposite direction so here's one they're hanging absolutely down the easiest is you just picked that fruit up and it detaches very well so what you want to do in this case you have a couple you can just split them apart but twist so what not to do please don't just pull the fruit you pull the fruit you'll pull off the Spurs that's the production for next year the year after in the following years so please don't just pull the fruit off sometimes you'll get it sometimes you'll get the Spurs with it don't pull lift don't pull lift got it got it good picking pears is the trickiest fruit I find because if you let them go ripe like this and you say well that's ripe pears ripen from the inside out so usually when they're ripe on the inside not in this case they're often overripe on the outside this one's really just about perfect it's starting to get a little bit I call it sawdust where it's kind of that dry situation so you want to get them year to year note when they start to ripen and pick them ideally a week before so we have the first fruit ripening on this tree this is the time to pick them and you want to pick pears green to be sure they're not overripe on the inside and then keep them in the fridge and take them out leave them on the counter for a week or two and they will ripen up to be just perfect there's a little bit of technique with using your fingers to pick I just want to show you how to pick using your index and using your thumb as lever points so say I want to pick this fruit I could pull which is a no-no or I could grab the fruit put my finger there it's not time to pick these yet so I could put my finger here as I'm picking and lift that fruit up you see how my finger acts as a lever point and that way when I go to pick them I don't damage so I could do that with my index or I also do that with my thumb so with my thumb is as I'm picking I just put my thumb on that lever point and I lift so that way you put your thumb and you lift that gives you results of picking using your fingers without damage I just want to show you now using your whole hand cuz if you pick one fruit at a time that's easy you pick one fruit at time look you're picking on an outing you're not in the hurry you watch the birds you you enjoyed the surroundings picking one fruit at a time is fine if you want to pick for your own trees you want to start to pick a little more then you start to use your whole hand there is a bit of technique using your whole hand so let's just say you're picking and these are small fruit when you're picking big apples or big pears the trick is use your let in this case I'll use this finger cuz I'm there you pick one then you switch you pick the other you pick the other and now you're using your whole hand so you want to really fill up and often the key is keep filling up between these fruit are not really they're only ready in another month but I'm just showing you so you pick one then you use your next finger spot pick two pick three the ideas load up your hands so some people I've seen Pickers with really big hands they'll put four fruit in one hand big fruit and they can pick so if you're a big handed you have an advantage to picking fruit so practice that and try to use your whole hand and then one really important thing is don't drop your fruit into the bag please most of these will bruise so you deposit deposit gently think of them as eggs you deposit them in your bag in your basket don't drop them please one thing to realize the Sun will make a big difference South Side and the very top of the tree in the full Sun will ripen faster than those on the north side or the shady side of the tree many trees will require two or three pickings to get the fruit really at their peak of ripeness so consider that when you're picking look for the fruit on the sunny side of the tree they'll tend to be the rapist picking plums is more question of tickling them so if they're really ripe they'll just tickle right off obviously commercially you don't want to wait that long because you will lose a higher percentage of your crop show you the difference these on the sunny side and these on the inside which I have to pull off same plum tree very different in ripeness that's still quite hard and these are really juicy soft delicious so you want plums to be really ripe to get absolute bang for your buck and so just tickle them if you have to pull them off they're not right but plums tend to be pretty easy to tell just by the color I know something else you're thinking what's the problem picking fruit I always just shake the tree right well you know what if it's your tree go ahead and shake it but if it's somebody else's tree please don't shake my trees or other people's trees shaking is great if you're gonna put tarps down I'll show you what it looks like when when we pick apples for juice and we're just shaking everything off it works great we load two tarps one on each side of the tree move it ahead to each tree and just shake the tree but if you're not having a tarp down and you're shaking you will damage some fruit fruit will get there you'll get about 15 to 20 percent of the fruit will be damaged they as they're falling they fall on a branch they get bruised they fall on another fruit they get bruised they fall on a spur they get a hole in it so there will be some damage but yes it is a lot faster than going up the ladder and picking so I'll just show you what happens and usually when we're picking fruit like that we do want to wear something on our head even a hard hat is not a bad idea but when you shake fruit trees you shorten the life of that tree by about 20% by hand probably doesn't do that but certainly machine harvesting fruit from fruit trees does shorten life of the tree so let me show you what happens in this case I know there are some ripe pears in here and they will come down and they probably will splat we usually grab a couple of branches it's easier to grab a branch than the trunk ow so fruit fall how do you determine whether fruit is ripe so we got three dates of apples here mid August mid September early September and late September one way is just looking at the fruit as you get to know the cultivars you'll know when it's right by the color the background color and the color this one was taken from the inside of the tree so it may not be quite as ripe as it should be these are looking pretty red so that one might be kind of ripe and these just are red but there's still quite a lot of background color on the green so obviously just by sight is one the other way is tasting it so you can just try it and say well I still actually it should be sweeter than that so the next thing is you look at the color of the flesh this one is almost white but it still got some green hint to it so I know it's not totally right let's just compare that with one of these that looks redder that's almost about the same so even though this is a good three weeks later than this this these two are about the same that was picked on the south side of the tree that was taken in the inside of the tree right in the center so this one will be actually sweeter it's a sweet sweet apple and this one shouldn't be ripe at all and still got a lot of green to it so you see the gradation those two that's a little wider but that's definitely got a lot of green tint to it now that's so background color your color of the flesh the taste I don't even want to taste this one I know it's gonna be quite green but one of the key things to find out it's just look at the core so there you go that's the latest Apple totally almost totally white seeds and you get the middle seasoned Apple here or at least middle of these two these three so that one you see the seed is almost fully brown so that's an indication it's it's pretty well there it's not missing much and this one I suspect is gonna be about the same just based on the taste actually it's even less right so you can see the difference even though this one is an earlier Apple than this by the seeds this one it was less ripe because it was in the inside of the tree so I'd like to show you one totally ripe I just don't have one totally ripe I thought that one would be ripe enough so you want one ripe will be chestnut brown on the inside this isn't next and this is definitely the Lisa right just a good key to remember you know they say apples brown and this one's starting to brown if you have ten apples and you cut them all and you leave them the one that turns brown the least has the highest level of antioxidants so I know agriculture Canada has been working on that and they found some apples that will be two to three days without going Brown at all so that shows a high level of antioxidant or oxidized or oxidize the iron that's in the apple so there's a great little trick if you want to know what chopped is probably unnecessarily the healthiest for you but at least has the highest level of antioxidants go for the one that Browns the least and that's kind of how you tell whether they're right or not so that's all there is to picking fruit without causing damage if you're it's your own trees it's up to you but when you're picking on someone else's trees please pick conscientiously remember to lift lift lift and have fun it's meant to be an outing so see you next week thanks for watching hey please subscribe and check out our latest video certainly tastes horrible that's horrible complain another one