At commercial orchards, apples are stored in coolers that are kept very cold and have high humidity to prevent skin shriveling. Apples will not freeze at 32 degrees due to their sugar content and are normally ok until around 25 degrees. Best to store at 36-38 degrees and high humidity. If storing in a separate refrigerator just being used for apples, I would occasionally open up to vent accumulated ethylene gas. Apple boxes used at orchards are slotted to help with air flow just because of this (although now many use large bins).

I have kept red delicious from my tree in the refrigerator until mid January when it started to get soft. Even with cold storage apples will continue to ripen although slowly. Honeycrisp can be ok thru January but can loose a lot of flavor when stored for a long period of time.

Thank you! Any chance, smaller versions of such cooler are available for users like myself?

There is always the old tried n' true root cellar storage. It achieves the ideal temp and humidity for long term storage of many fruits and vegetables. Sadly a real root cellar isn't possible for suburban and/or city dwellers as it requires ground to build the underground storage area.

But plans are available on the web for small similar storage units if you have any access to ground that can be dug into. They range from a plastic tote container with lid can be set deep into a hole and covered with plastic wrapped wood to small units one can build in their basement, especially if some of that basement is below ground level.

And there is always canning and/or dehydrating them for indefinite storage.

Dave

I am fortunate as we store a lot of our apples in the old milkhouse. The walls are made of stone and 4' thick. Not heated but attached to the barn. Works great when we have a cool fall for storing late ripening apples (Red Delicious, Ida Red, Northern Spy ect). Not good at all for storing my apples that ripen in September since it is too warm a building at that time. Best I can do at that time is leave the windows open at night and run a fan to pump the cold air in.

For several winters now we have successfully stored apples in the milkhouse until mid-February. Really neat trying to pick out what variety to use for making some applesauce to go with our Christmas dinner each year. Such a wonderful problem to have.

I recall as a boy our German neighbors built a root cellar. They had a pipe venting to the outside to let cold air in. It had a dampener on it to open or close the pipe depending on the temperature in the room. A thermometer was mounted on the wall next to the pipe to manually regulate the air flow.

I just keep a plastic bag of apples in the bottom of the fridge with a couple a wet but squeezed-out thick cotton terry cloth hand towels in the bag. Re-wet the towels as needed. I think the longest I've kept apples that way was mid or late September to January. I'm pretty sure I could not have gotten them to February in a pleasant state for fresh eating.

We kept ours in the root cellar, but haven't grown HoneyCrisp. We always wrapped each apple in a sheet of newspaper, so if one went bad it didn't cause all the others to rot. That "one bad apple spoils the barrel" thing is actually true.

Here I have an unheated back room and store some things like butternut squash, potatoes and a few apples, all of them stay usable through Christmas, at least. A couple of years ago I was eating the last of the butternut squash at Easter, although the apples didn't last quite as long. The last few apples were getting softer, and were used for baking, not for fresh eating.

Annie