With a birds eye view of a Yummy orchard, you can see rows and rows of satisfyingly straight apple trees. Sometimes, on a sunny day, you might spot lines of bright white glowing in-between the trees. This isn’t just a nice carpet for the orchard dwelling pukekos, this is in fact reflective ground cloth. It is a method many growers, like ourselves, employ to help our red skinned apples to colour up. We know how you love a red apple!
When an apple is directly exposed to sunlight, it triggers the production of anthocyanins. These are the pigments responsible for red and pink hues. Leaf cover, branches loaded with fruit, shadow from nearby trees can all restrict the sunlight from hitting the entirety of an apple on the tree. This will result in low colour, or slightly green tones on the under exposed areas of the apple. This is where the reflective cloth comes in. We lay out kilometres of cloth where we know we may have reduced sunlight access for the growing apples. The cloth is only laid out a few weeks before harvest, it will reflect sun rays back up to the undersides of the fruit, creating a more uniform colour on each apple. This will never be used on varieties like Granny Smith, or Lemonade apples, as they have much lower levels of anthocyanin-producing genes. A green apple with a pink sunburn is not the goal!
So if you ever see these alleyways of white in an orchard, you know the grower is trying to ensure not just a yummy apple, but a pretty apple too! 😊
