Why can’t we get apples as good as I got 60 years ago?
When I was a little younger I could get a bag of 2-inch Macs and eat great apples. These apples were ripe and soft and juicy and they were sold even in the spring.
Now we get apples that are green and hard with almost no juice. You might think they are just not ripe so let them sit for a while, but then they start to rot in the middle but look good from the outside. My grandfather advised not to eat unripe apples so I wouldn’t get “green apple two step.”
My feeling is that “new technology” is being used to “preserve” the apples so they are picked green and put into a nitrogen atmosphere to stop ripening so they are still green when taken out for sale next spring. But they never ripen.
I used to relish a good ripe McIntosh and eat the flesh right down to the seed pods. But no more. I have to use a knife to cut slices of sour apples. No juice, no eating to the core.
I guess apple growers like selling green apples all year and must make enough money and not want to sell more to old folks who remember what ripe apples are like.
Peter Grant
Bristol