Harvesting Loquats: Picking Ripe, Handling Without Bruising, Using the Glut

It ripens on the tree or not at all

A loquat picked early will soften a little and it will never get sweeter. There is no post-harvest ripening worth the name: the sugar is made on the tree and what you pick is what you get. This is the reason shop-bought loquats are usually disappointing and homegrown ones are a revelation, and it is also the reason impatience is expensive here. A fruit taken a week early is sharp, firm and faintly astringent, and it stays that way on the windowsill.

Judge ripeness by three things together. The skin color has turned fully from green through pale yellow to the deep orange or amber tone of your tree, with no green cast at the shoulders near the stem. The flesh gives very slightly under gentle pressure at the widest point, the same feel as a ripe apricot. And the fruit comes away from the truss easily when you lift it, without you having to tug.

The final test is to eat one. Loquat trees vary enough that no color description substitutes for tasting the first ripe fruit off each tree each season. When the first fruit is sweet with just enough acid behind it and no puckering aftertaste, the truss is ready. Fruit at the top of the tree and on the sunny side ripens several days ahead of the shaded interior, so a single tree is picked over three or four times, not stripped in one go.

Cut the stem, hold the stem

The skin of a loquat is thin, and the flesh beneath it marks at the lightest pressure. A fruit gripped between finger and thumb to pull it off shows two brown patches by the following morning, exactly where you held it. This is not a storage problem you can solve later; it happens at the moment of picking. Handling is the whole technique.

Use snips or small pruners and cut the stem, leaving a short piece of stalk on the fruit. Cutting matters for two reasons: pulling tears the skin at the stem end and opens a wound that rots within a day, and pulling also snaps off the woody spur, taking the neighboring fruit with it. Where a whole truss is ripe together, cut the truss off entire and carry it by the stem, then separate the fruit at the kitchen table.

Carry the fruit in a shallow tray, one or two layers deep, not in a bucket or a bag. Loquats stacked six inches (15 cm) deep crush the ones at the bottom under their own weight. Pick into the container you will store them in so the fruit is handled once, and pick in the cool of the morning rather than the heat of the afternoon, because warm fruit softens faster and bruises more easily.

1. Taste-test the tree first Pick and eat the single most advanced fruit before you start. If it is sharp, come back in three or four days. A whole basket picked a week early is a wasted crop.
2. Snip, do not pull Cut the stalk with snips, leaving a quarter inch (5 mm) of stem on the fruit. That short stalk seals the fruit and keeps it sound for days longer than a torn stem end.
3. Handle by the stem Lift each fruit by its stalk or cradle it in an open palm. Never grip the sides. Every fingertip pressure mark turns brown within twelve to twenty-four hours.
4. Lay them out, do not pile them One or two layers in a shallow tray, stems up if you can manage it. Depth is what bruises fruit in transit from tree to kitchen.
5. Pick over the tree every few days Ripening runs from the sunny top downward and inward over about two weeks. Take what is ready and leave the rest; fruit left one picking too long splits and attracts wasps.

It does not travel and it does not keep

Accept this at the start of the season and plan around it. Fully ripe loquats hold two or three days at room temperature and about a week in the refrigerator in a single layer, and after that the flesh goes brown around the seeds and the flavor flattens. Fruit that is jostled in a car boot or posted to a relative arrives bruised, whatever you pack it in. Loquat is a fruit you eat where it grows and give away by hand the same day.

The other complication is that the whole crop arrives at once. A mature tree can carry a large quantity of fruit that all becomes ripe inside a fortnight, which is far more than a household eats fresh. Decide in advance what happens to the surplus, because deciding on the day the fruit softens leads to a compost pile full of it.

The seeds are large and there are several per fruit, so the usable flesh is perhaps half to two thirds of the weight. Factor that in when you plan preserving: a bucket of fruit reduces to considerably less than you expect once the seeds and the papery inner membrane are out. Removing the seeds is easiest on slightly under-ripe fruit, which is a good reason to process the firmer end of the crop rather than the softest.

Bruised and split fruit is still perfectly good for cooking if you use it the same day. Cut out the mark, remove the seeds, and put it straight into a pan. The waste in a loquat season is almost always fruit that sat for two days while someone decided what to do with it.

Record the harvest window

Note the date you picked the first ripe fruit and the date you took the last. That window shifts by a couple of weeks year to year with the winter, and knowing your own tree's timing tells you when to have nets on, when to be at home, and when to have jars ready. It also tells you, over a few years, exactly how long after bloom your tree ripens, which is the most useful single number you can hold about it.

Record the yield in weight or in trays, and note it alongside how hard you thinned that season. This is the pair of numbers that settles the thinning question for good: a lightly thinned tree gives more fruit and less to eat, and having your own figures makes you willing to thin properly next time.

Finally, note which parts of the tree ripened first and which fruit was best. Over time this usually points at the same well-lit outer wood, and that is a direct instruction for how to prune.