Apples, pears and tree fruit in New Zealand
New Zealand grows a great deal of apple and pear fruit and very little of it is open for self-pick, because the industry is built around export packhouses. The orchards that do open are worth knowing about, because tree fruit is the one crop on this site that will still be good at the end of winter.
When
Autumn, roughly February through April depending on variety and district, and later in the south. Apples ripen in a long sequence: early varieties in February, the main crop through March, and the best keepers last of all. An orchard picked out one weekend may be picking a completely different apple three weeks later.
This makes tree fruit the natural bookend to a berry season. When the raspberries have finished, the apples are starting.
How to tell an apple is ready
Lift and twist. A ripe apple comes away when you cup it, lift it upward and give a small twist. If you have to pull hard, it is not ready.
Look at the seeds. Cut one open. Brown seeds mean a ripe apple; white ones mean it needs longer on the tree.
The ground colour, not the red. The red blush is variety and sun exposure. The honest signal is the background colour, which shifts from grass-green to a paler yellow-green as the fruit matures.
Pears are the exception to almost all of this: they are picked mature but hard and ripened off the tree, because a pear left to soften on the branch goes gritty at the core. If an orchard hands you hard pears, that is correct.
The rule that protects next year
Never pull an apple straight down. The short woody stub the fruit hangs from is a spur, and that same spur carries next year’s fruit. Pulling takes it off, and the tree loses that position for good.
Lift and twist. It takes a moment to learn and every grower will thank you for it.
Ladders: use the orchard’s, if they provide any, and never climb into a tree. Most self-pick orchards keep their trees low enough to pick from the ground for exactly this reason.
Storing them, which is the real prize
Apples keep for months if you do three things.
Pick keepers, not eaters. Ask which varieties store. Early apples are for eating now, and no amount of care makes them last.
Do not stack bruised fruit. One damaged apple spoils the box around it. Sort before storing and eat the marked ones first.
Cold, dark, and slightly humid. A garage or cellar rather than a kitchen. Wrap individually in newspaper if you have the patience, or lay them out in a single layer not touching each other, and check the box every few weeks.
Pears store the same way but for weeks rather than months, and they should be brought into a warm room a few days before you want to eat them.
Updated 10 September 2026