I’ve been waiting to harvest the Granny Smith apples, because they haven’t been ripening well this year. It could be a number of factors, including the spider mites that attacked the leaves this year, probably making it less productive of sugars, and it could be that our fall got really cold in mid-September and stayed that way until about two weeks ago. These are a late-ripening apple variety, and I’ve heard some say that Grannies don’t do well in Utah because they’re so late. But in all the past five years, they’ve always ripened fine if I just let them stay on the tree till late October.
Anyway, they look good, and many are large and juicy, but the juice doesn’t have as much “punch” as it is supposed to — it’s a little bland. And the skins seem a little thick and hard to me. I think they’ll be fine for baking, although I don’t really want to gain five pounds eating all the pies myself; no one else in my family seems to like cooked fruit! Yeah, I know they’re a bit weird, but hey, they’re family so you gotta love ’em.
After a few weeks, I checked on the surplus apples left on the tree, and they had all turned rubbery from too much freezing. Most of them are still on the tree — perhaps I should knock them off.
Also, I take back what I said about the flavor of the apples being a bit bland. After cutting many up and making pies with them, I think the flavor inside was fine but the skin was just too thick and a little bitter because of its thickness.
I posted about this in the GardenWeb Fruit & Orchards forum, and a guy in zone 7 says he sometimes leaves his grannies on the tree till December! He also felt that they never really got ripe. Seems like my problem was probably the cold fall weather last month, rather than the spider mites. I did leave about 30% of the apples still on the tree, so I’ll just wait and see if any get more ripe over the next several weeks.