Anon, Field Magazine 1911, on Keeping Apples in Storage

“There is no secret in what appears to be Messrs Bunyard’s remarkable success in keeping fruit. The type of fruit store they use is both well known and cheap to construct. Similar ones can be seen at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Gardens and elsewhere. A detailed description and figure of them has appeared In Thompson’s Gardener’s Assistant. They may be described as span-roofed wooden sheds, with a straw or heather thatch 6in. thick on the sides and 18in. on the roof, a window at one end, a double door at the other, and some roof ventilation. The matchboard shelves are 1ft. apart, with a little space between each board for air circulation. A thin layer of straw is placed on the shelves, and the selected fruit is carefully deposited, and frequently examined, being only one layer deep in the case of the better qualities. The earthen floor is kept slightly damp. A fruit room of this type. 30ft. long by 12ft. wide, is capable of holding 300 bushels, and should cost about £30. Many so-called fruit stores are admirable as ripening places, but are quite ill adapted for keeping fruit for long periods. Little has as yet been done in this country in the way of keeping fruit in cold storage, and no doubt it is impracticable for long periods; but it is certain that growers who have more highly perishable fruit than they can dispose of to advantage immediately would do well to place some of it in cold storage for a few weeks.”

From a description of the Temple Show in the Field magazine, June 10th 1911

I came across this extract some time ago, and sadly my subscription to the British Newspaper Archive has since lapsed, so I’m unable to re-check the context. But I’m pretty sure it was from a typically anonymised article in the Field magazine, which is why I’m unable to properly credit the original writer.

It’s an interesting piece though, outlining the construction of a “cheap” fruit store, which we’re told we ought to be able to knock together for about £30 in 1911 money, which can be estimated at around £4,300 today. Not so cheap then, but I reckon with a hypothetical £4.3k to play with, it would be a fascinating exercise to work out if I could build something similar, had I the skills with which to build it, of course.

I also have a pdf copy of the 1859 edition of Robert Thompson’s Gardener’s Assistant to-hand, so I’ve been able to cross-reference the designs provided in that volume, which appear on page 615. Thompson describes the “Vicissitudes of temperature” that need to be guarded against, because, in fluctuating, they “have very injurious effects on the keeping of fruit”, and tells us that:

“Josiah Moorman, Esq., of the Clapham Road, has a fruit-room which combines all the above-mentioned favourable conditions. Fig. 259 is an interior view, and Fig. 260 a section of it.”

Here are the diagrams in question:

And Thompson goes on to say:

“The construction of the room will be understood from the following explanation:

a shelves
b close boarding round the sides of the room
c air space between the boards and the wall

There is also an air space on the north side between the two plaster ceilings, as shown in Fig. 260 ; in which

d is a stove
e a circular window hung on pivots and fitted with a roller blind
f partitions of open work similar to the shelves.

The room is a partitioned-off portion of a loft, and has a coach house below it ; thus it is insulated from the earth, and consequently its temperature is not raised by heat from the latter. It has therefore a cool temperature, nearly corresponding with the mean of the winter season. The small stove is seldom used unless the temperature of the room falls below freezing.”

Ah. Okay. So I’ll need to build an extension to my modest suburban dwelling, to include a coach house and storage loft? Methinks that’ll set me back a bit more than £4,300.

Joking aside, the 1911 article and Thompson‘s 1858 fruit-house description show that in the pre-industrial-refrigeration age, when a lot more fruit was grown and harvested locally, rather than shipped halfway across the world and then cool-stored until they are wanted by the supermarkets, growers were able to come up with relatively simple, and apparently inexpensive, solutions to the issue of storing their produce in good condition. And when they got the structure and conditions right, they could indeed store apples and pears in particular right through the winter months and into the hungry gap of spring and early summer, as long as they grew the right varieties in the first place.

Insulation, in the form of an air-gap between the double walls and double ceiling, appears to be the key, in order to keep temperatures and humidity levels fairly constant. Today, some form of insulation panels or foam could presumably do the same job, and perhaps a thermostatic heating / cooling unit, with automated ventilation? I’m no engineer, but I suspect we’re heading well beyond that suggested £4,300 again, aren’t we? It seems like a very large investment in order to keep a few apples in edible condition for a few months of the year. But what would the less expensive alternatives look like?

Clamp storage is something I’ve read about but never tried. I have toyed with the idea of installing a simple, slatted, wooden apple shelving unit in my garden shed, but I’m not sure whether that would my produce safe from those vicissitudes of winter, not to mention the local mouse population, so I haven’t invested in anything just yet. I did store a few late apples in my unheated porch last year, but results were mixed. Even the ‘Howgate Wonder’ cookers were showing signs of deterioration by mid January and had to be used up before they collapsed and rotted.

I’ve also seen social media posts in the past from someone who makes use an old fridge-freezer, switched off, as an insulated storage unit. Which seems like it has potential, as long as you remember to open the door every so often, to try to vent the build-up of ethylene, the natural gas that’s produced by the fruit and accelerates the ripening process.

How about you? Do you have a good, reliable method for storing apples, pears or other fruit, without freezing, cooking, or otherwise kitchen-preserving them? Please do leave a comment bellow, or if you have photos that you’d like to share and you’d be happy for me to use them in a future ‘How-To’ article, please send them over by email and I’ll see what I can pull together.