What are the most sustainable crops to grow for food security? Perhaps, in your growing zones, oranges or peaches win for best fruit crop. Hot, dry climates might call for dates or raisins. But for me, growing organic apples is best. Perhaps that’s because they grew well in rural Idaho and its chill hours. Or perhaps it’s because my community knew more about growing and preserving apples than any other fruit.
“It’s not that bad. It’s organic. Just cut the worm out.”
I laugh even as I type this. For us, “organic” was how we grew apples, but it did mean carving good fruit away from crumbly black worm tunnels. Modern techniques for growing organic apples include moth traps, fruit barriers, and organic insecticides, like bacterial toxins that only target caterpillars. But for us, apple season meant getting a call from a friend. “Hey, get this fruit before it all falls!” Then, we’d ride to the friend’s farm, load up brown paper shopping bags, and process apples for the next few weeks.
Wormy apples are just fine for ciders and applesauce, Mom said. Cut off the good part, toss it in the pot. Throw the bad part to the chickens. Simmer the fruit, drain juice into canning jars, mash fruit. Applesauce became pancake topping and the replacement “oil” in recipes — that is, if we didn’t eat it directly out of the jar.
As an adult, I graft scions from friends’ trees onto my own, so those trees produce multiple varieties from one trunk. I research my location’s chill hours, and then buy unique varieties that I couldn’t find at my local garden centers. My current farm has young ‘Pink Pearl,’ ‘Niedzwetzkyana,’ and ‘Smokehouse’ apple trees.
Maybe because of where and how I grew up, I consider growing organic apples to be integral to year-round sustainability. Towering perennials produce an abundance if that last killing frost arrives on time — an abundance that will carry you through years when the late frost strikes as blossoms are most vulnerable. Apples’ storability, their versatility for recipes, and the long lives of the trees themselves place the fruit at the top of a list of sustainable fruit crops for food security.
Apples are now so iconic to American life that other countries try out the market. When I was younger, I might’ve laughed at that because of how intertwined apples and American mythology have become, despite the fact that apples aren’t native to North America. But a good friend, after visiting several farms in his motherland Nigeria, showed me photos of Nigerian apples. The skin texture and color resembled American apples, but they were shaped more like oxheart tomatoes. Now, we’re trying to acquire apple trees for our cooperative farm in Zambia. It’s difficult but not impossible. If all else fails, we can bring in phytosanitary-certified apple rootstocks, and then purchase scions from one successful apple farm in Western Province, Zambia. So even though apples have taken on symbolic significance in America, they can contribute to food security in all kinds of places.
What sustainable fruit crops or apple varieties grow best in your location? How do you preserve them? And how do you handle worms? Let me know at MAmes@MotherEarthNews.com.
May your autumn apples be sweet and crisp,
Marissa Ames
