Apple trees grow black lumps - is it a disease? Teaching you the right way to deal with it

Farmers in the past relied on the heavens for their food. Although technology now helps crops grow well, not every year's crop is a pleasant surprise - many times it is a shock.

Nobody knows what happened to Old Zhang's apples this year - they grew so ugly they were too embarrassing to show anyone. Before bagging, the apples had been growing very well in size, and he thought it would be another bumper harvest year. But when he opened the bags at picking time, the apples were all like tree bark, too ugly to look at.

Growing apples

What to do? He couldn't just throw them away - he had grown them through a whole year of hard work. Old Zhang really had no heart to sell them, so he set up his little stall in town, sat on a folding stool and smoked a cigarette.

Before he even finished the cigarette, someone came asking the price. Old Zhang quickly stubbed out the cigarette and greeted the buyer. The woman acted as if she had found a treasure: "I finally found this kind of apple."

Old Zhang was an honest man: "These apples are so ugly - what do you want them for?"

Growing apples

Hearing Old Zhang's reply, the woman laughed out loud: "My daughter-in-law heard somewhere that cracked apples like these crack because they have a lot of sugar. She told me that whenever I buy apples, I should buy this kind. She said the good-looking ones are all waxed, and eating them is bad for your health."

Old Zhang felt he had stumbled onto a business opportunity: "Yes, yes, our apples really are all natural, green food."

The whole three-wheeled cartload of apples Old Zhang had brought was sold out in no time - and of course he had this woman's one remark to thank for it.

Is it really because there is too much sugar that apples develop cracks?

A bumper apple harvest

Apples developing cracks is actually not because the sugar content is too high. It is because the fruit tree and the apple skin lack the element calcium, which causes the skin to grow too slowly during the fruit-swelling stage, leading to cracks in the apples.