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Apple Picking Near Berlin: Five Orchards, the Day Each One Opens and the Ride There

Writer: Yusuf Ucuz
Yusuf Ucuz
Sep 18
7 min read

Every September the same plan starts going round a Berlin group chat: someone wants to go apple picking on Saturday, someone else found a farm on Instagram, and by Friday night nobody has checked whether that farm opens on a Saturday, whether the bus runs at the weekend, or whether the field is even inside the ticket you already pay for.

I have done this the wrong way round. I once rode an hour and a half out with two friends to a field that picks only on weekends, on a Wednesday, and came home with a bag from the farm shop instead. The apples were fine. The day was not what anyone had in mind.

The fix is small. Around Berlin there are five pick-your-own orchards with apples on the trees right now, and they differ far more in which days they open and how the last few kilometres work than in the fruit itself. Choose the day first, then the field.

Ripe red apples hanging low on the branches of an apple tree in an orchard, with grass and a gravel path behind it

Late September is the middle of the season around Berlin: Elstar, Boskoop and Rubinette are on the trees now, Pinova and Jonagold follow at the end of the month.

Apple picking near Berlin: the five fields worth the ride

These are the orchards within reach of Berlin that confirmed on their own pages this week that apple picking is open. I checked all five on 18 September 2026, and I left out the farms that pick only on request.

  • Obsthof Lindicke, Glindow near Werder (Havel). Picks apples and pears on Saturdays and Sundays only, 9:00 to 17:00. The only one of the five that publishes a price list: 2.20 euro a kilo up to 10 kg, less above that, and windfalls at 0.75.

  • Obstgut Marquardt, the orchard on the Birnenweg in Satzkorn, a village inside Potsdam. Apples and plums every day, 9:00 to 16:30, according to its self-harvest page.

  • Neumann's Erntegarten, Am Heineberg in Potsdam-Bornim. Open Friday to Sunday this week, with the gate letting people in between 12:00 and 16:00 and a 3 euro entry per person, going by the farm's weekly update.

  • Selbstpflücke Elisenau, run by Pomona Gartenbau on the north-eastern edge of Berlin in Ahrensfelde. Apple picking since 31 August, every day 9:00 to 18:00, last entry 17:30.

  • Bio Apfelhof Müller, Wesendahl near Altlandsberg. An organic orchard, open Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00 to 17:00, closed on Mondays, as its self-picking page says.

Read that list by day and it thins out quickly. On a Monday only Marquardt and Elisenau pick at all. On a Wednesday, three. It takes a Saturday or Sunday for all five to open.

The ticket you already have probably covers it

Here is the part that surprised me when I checked. Berlin's ABC ticket reaches much further than its name suggests, because the C zone includes whole towns around the city. According to the VBB list of destinations, Satzkorn and Bornim in Potsdam, Elisenau and Blumberg, Bernau, Strausberg and Wesendahl all sit inside Berlin C.

So four of the five fields are covered by an ABC ticket or an ABC monthly card. If you already carry a Deutschlandticket, all five are, and the question disappears. I compared those two cards properly in the post on the Berlin monthly ticket.

The exception is Glindow. The same VBB list puts Werder (Havel) inside Berlin C and Glindow outside it, even though Glindow belongs to Werder. On an ABC ticket you are covered to Werder station and not on the bus from there to the orchard.

The yellow brick station building at Werder (Havel) with an articulated regional bus waiting at the stop in front of it

Werder (Havel) station. The RE1 from Berlin stops here inside the ABC area, and the bus to the Glindow orchard leaves from the stop in front.

My advice for Lindicke on an ABC ticket: get off at Werder, and either buy the short extension for the bus or walk the roughly 4 km out to the Glindower Gartenstraße. It is a level walk out of town, and it makes the heavy bag on the way back feel earned.

Which field fits your day

The widget below does the sorting for you. Choose the day you are free and the station you would leave from, and it puts the five fields on the map, crosses out the ones that are shut that day, and ranks the rest by the real journey time from the VBB timetable. It also tells you the latest time to leave and still get an hour among the trees before the gate closes.

A few patterns come out of those numbers that are worth knowing before Saturday.

  • Potsdam is the easy side. Neumann's Erntegarten is about 70 minutes from Hauptbahnhof at the weekend, on the S7 and one bus. From Zoo it is closer to an hour.

  • Elisenau is the fastest field in the whole set, but only on weekdays. From Ostkreuz the RB25 to Blumberg and the bus 895 get you to the gate in about 45 minutes on a Wednesday. That bus does not run at the weekend, and the Saturday route becomes the RE3 to Bernau, another bus, and 1.7 km on foot.

  • Wesendahl is a weekday trip by public transport. On weekdays the bus 931 from S Strausberg Nord stops a short walk from the farm. At the weekend part of that service runs as the R931 call bus, which the VBB says you book by phone at least 90 minutes ahead on (03341) 4494902. If you have a bike, S Strausberg Nord is the obvious place to start riding.

  • Neumann's does not open until midday. Leaving Berlin at nine gets you there with time to wait at the gate.

What is ripe this week

The varieties move fast in September, and it is worth checking before you go if you have one apple in mind. Obsthof Lindicke publishes the list weekend by weekend. For 19 and 20 September it names Elstar, Boskoop, Rubinette, Topaz and Sonnenglanz, plus four pears including Alexander Lucas. From 26 September Pinova, Pilot and Jonagold join them.

Elisenau opened its apple season on 31 August with Sissired, Santana, Elstar and Gala. Bio Apfelhof Müller lists eight varieties on its own site, among them Wellant, Gravensteiner and Topaz, and says the season runs until mid-October.

Rows of apples on red shelves, each variety labelled with a handwritten card, at the Russian colony Alexandrowka in Potsdam

Named varieties laid out side by side in Potsdam's Alexandrowka colony. At the pick-your-own fields the ripe rows change from one weekend to the next.

The practical point: Boskoop is the one to pick if you want to bake, because it holds its shape and its sharpness. Elstar and Rubinette are the eating apples. And if a variety is not ripe on your weekend, you will not find it on the trees, whatever last year looked like.

How the day actually works at the field

Every one of these farms runs the same basic way, and the small rules differ enough to trip you up once.

  • You pay by weight at the exit. Lindicke says on its page that it takes cards. The others do not say, so I would carry some cash.

  • Bring a bag or a box, or buy one there. Lindicke lends baskets. Bio Apfelhof Müller sells cardboard boxes at the farm.

  • Dogs are a question to ask first. At Lindicke dogs stay on the lawn by the entrance and not in the tree rows. At Bio Apfelhof Müller they are welcome on a lead.

  • Check the farm's page on the morning you go. Neumann's updates its hours week by week and warns that they can change at short notice. Elisenau posts every morning whether the field is open. Heavy rain closes fields.

Red windfall apples scattered across the grass under the trees of an orchard in autumn

Windfalls under the trees. At Obsthof Lindicke they sell for 0.75 euro a kilo against 2.20 for picked fruit, which makes sense if you are making juice or apple sauce anyway.

Pick what you will actually eat or cook in the next two weeks. A kilo is five to seven average apples, and ten kilos looks like a small amount on the tree and a ridiculous amount on a kitchen table in a two-room Altbau. I learned that one the hard way too.

Where apple picking fits in a Berlin autumn

Apple picking pairs well with the other things this time of year does best. If you enjoy a day with a basket, the post on mushroom picking around Berlin covers the forests and the rules, and the Berlin hiking trails post has green routes that start from the same S-Bahn lines. If you would rather have the fruit without the ride, the Berlin weekly markets are where Brandenburg growers bring their apples into the city.

A wooden crate filled to the top with freshly picked green and red apples

A full crate looks modest in the orchard. Carried up the stairs at Ostkreuz, it is a different story.

My move

Pick the day first. If you are free on a weekday, go to Elisenau from Ostkreuz or Hauptbahnhof, because it is the quickest field in the set and the weekday bus drops you at the gate. If your only free day is Saturday or Sunday, go to Potsdam: Marquardt from Spandau and the west of the city, Neumann's from the centre, timed so you reach Bornim just after the gate opens at noon.

Save Glindow for a weekend when you want the walk as much as the apples, and Wesendahl for a weekday or a bike. Whichever you choose, open the farm's own page that morning before you leave the flat. That one check is the whole difference between a good Saturday and a bag from the farm shop.

Source and licence details for the 5 photographs used in this article.

Ripe red apples on a tree in an orchard: Seefan2012, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Werder (Havel) railway station with a bus at the stop outside: Mabit1, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Labelled apple varieties on shelves in the Russian colony Alexandrowka, Potsdam: Alraunenstern, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Windfall apples in the grass of an orchard: Z thomas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A crate of freshly picked apples: MyRepairs, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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