This is the best time of year to eat apples, right after the harvest. Maybe you, like I, have had the pleasure of picking apples right from the tree. One memorable year my family joined my brother John at work at an orchard in New York State. We picked apples along with the workers and filled up our trunk with fresh picked Granny Smiths and Gala’s. John has been at this for a while and still is. Over the years John and I have talked about all things apple; the growing season, pruning, replanting, bees, fungus, and pesticides. He told me about the locals who use the “drops” (apples that fall to the ground) for applesauce. I learned that apples are kept in cold storage through the winter, spring, and summer so we can have apples year round.
Recently I learned about the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen. The Clean 15 are those fruits and vegetables that we don’t necessarily need to buy organic since they are not grown with pesticides. The Dirty Dozen is where you want to put your extra pennies for organic. And the #1 at the top of the Dirty Dozen list? You got it, apples! I know John’s orchard uses pesticides, so I asked him to tell me more.
In his home orchard in the North Country of NY State they grow Macintosh. There is a fungus that without the fungicide causes a round black scab to appear on the skin of the apple. It doesn’t look good, so farmers use the fungicide to prevent these black scabs, so the apples look nice. ”It’s a cosmetic thing”, John told me. “The meat of an apple with the scab is still good”. John then told me about the chemicals they use in the orchard. There are three levels of pesticide labels, Danger, Warning, and Caution, with Caution being the most hazardous level as far as potential damage to living things. The product he uses at his orchard, Captan, has a Caution label. “When you read through the label where it says Caution, it says ‘Will cause immediate, permanent blindness’”. Of course they dilute the chemical with water, but that is pretty scary. He then told me that not too many farmers grow organic apples, but many that do sell them for apple juice. But not all apple juice is organic.
We talked a bit more about the Dirty Dozen. Brother John loves potatoes, #9 on the Dirty Dozen list. He mentioned that all of the potato farmers on Long Island where we grew up use Temic, which has been linked to the increase in breast cancer on Long Island. The pesticide gets into soil, is absorbed by the potatoes when they are in the soil. Over the years, the pesticide leaches through the soil and gets into the aquifer. Now the pesticide is in the drinking water. I never thought about potatoes being susceptible to pesticides since they grow underground, but there you have it! We’ll talk more about potatoes at another time!
My local farmers market supplies me with black dotted apples and my local grocery store is now carrying them too. I try to pick the ugly ones.