I'm Peter Hirst.
I'm a professor of horticulture at Purdue University.
And today we're going to talk about apples.
We're going to talk about how apples grow.
We're going to talk about why we should eat them, because they’re so healthy.
And we're going to talk about how we can keep apples growing in Indiana.
So let's start off with we're thinking about how apples grow.
They start off in the spring from a bud.
And so all these apples come from a tiny little bud
and that bud is smaller than the fingernail on your little pinky finger.
So it's very small. In the spring that bud starts to open.
And inside that bud, there's little leaves and little flowers.
The leaves are important because they come out
when they emerge and they photosynthesize.
Photosynthesis is when green leaves of plants
take energy from the sun and they convert that into carbohydrates
and sugars and chemical energy inside the plant, and they're using that
so the tree can grow. It can grow branches.
It can grow leaves. It can also grow roots.
Don't forget about those, even though we don't see them.
That's important. And also to grow fruit.
And so as the buds open, we have little leaves
that start to photosynthesize, make energy, and we have flowers.
And so the flowers require pollination for continued development.
Pollination is where a bee or another insect will bring pollen
from a different apple tree onto this apple tree to fertilize these flowers.
And without pollination, we don't get fruit developing.
And so without the bees, we're not going to have any apples.
So taking care of the bees is really important.
And things that we can do to help bees is to plant native plants,
is to plant a variety of plants, to give them things to to feed on.
And so that becomes very important.
So after pollination, then the fruit starts to develop
and they increase their size from very small to quite large.
And so then the apple starts to ripen. During ripening,
there's all kinds of changes that go on inside the fruit
that make the fruit good for us to eat.
So when the fruit are good to eat, then we harvest them.
So there are so many different kinds of apples.
There are green apples and red apples and yellow apples.
Some are sweet, some are sour,
some mature early in the season and some late in the season.
So what do I mean by that?
Well, here in Indiana, some apple varieties will ripen in July,
some won’t ripen until maybe October or even November.
And so different apples ripen at different times throughout the season.
There's so many different kinds and they’re delicious.
And so apples make a really delicious snack.
And not only are they delicious, they're also really healthy.
They have antioxidants. They have fiber.
They have lots of things that keep our bodies in good health.
And a lot of those very healthy compounds in apples are in the skin.
So when you're eating an apple, just eat the whole apple rather than peeling it,
because then you're missing out on a lot of the nutrition.
Now that you know how apples grow.
Now we're going to talk about what the farmer has to do to get
those great quality apples on the trees, because it doesn't just happen by itself.
They have to prune the trees.
So in the winter, they'll go and cut out some branches,
so to leave the best quality branches in the trees,
which are then going to produce the best quality apples. In the spring,
there's a lot of flowers on the trees.
If we leave them to their own, all those flowers
or a lot of those flowers will set fruit and we'll have too many fruit
and they'll be small and they won't taste very good.
And so the farmer reduces the number of apples on the tree
so that the remaining apples are the best quality.
And so so we have pruning.
We have thinning. We have pest control.
Who likes to eat apples with bugs in them and brown spots all over them?
Me neither.
And so what the farmer needs to do
is spray the trees to control the pest and diseases.
And they're very careful about what they spray and when they spray.
So the apples are still safe to eat, but we need to control those pests
and diseases.
And then come harvest time when the apples are starting to ripen,
there's various tests we can do on the apples to see when they're ripe.
The farmer will know, Oh, this is September,
these varieties are ready. In October,
These varieties are ready because they’ve done their tests on them
and they know which ones are ready at any time.
So we've talked about how apples grow.
We've talked about what the farmer needs to do to produce those apples.
And we've talked about how apples are healthy for us.
So how do we get one?
Well, we can go to a u-pick or a farmer's market, and apples in Indiana,
they ripen from about
August all the way through to October and maybe even into November.
And so there's lots of opportunities to get Indiana apples.
We can also get apples from the supermarket.
And they might be produced in Indiana or Washington
or maybe shipped around the world.
And so there's lots of opportunities to eat apples.
But this fall, let's eat an Indiana apple.
[APPLE CRUNCH]