Putting Food By - Janet Greene [194]
And remember: keep potatoes and apples well separated from each other—potatoes make apples musty.
Pumpkins
Harvest before frost, leaving on a few inches of stem. Condition at 80 F/ 27 C for about 2 weeks to harden the rind and heal surface injuries. Store them in fairly dry air at about 55 F/13 C (see chart). Watch the temperature carefully: too warm, and they get stringy; and pumpkins (and squashes) suffer chill damage in storage below 50 F/10 C—they’re not for outdoor cellars or pits. Just because they are big and tough doesn’t mean they can be handled roughly, so place them in rows on shelves, not dumped in a pile in a corner.
Radishes, Winter
Handle like Beets; see chart.
Salsify
The third vegetable (with parsnips and horseradish) that winters-over to advantage in the garden—so long as it remains frozen. If salsify must be stored, dig it when the soil is dry late in the season but before it freezes. Handle and root-cellar like Beets (and see chart).
Squashes
Condition and store like Pumpkins—but drier (see chart).
Sweet Potatoes
If a killing frost comes before you can dig them, cut the plants off at soil level, so decay in the vines can’t penetrate down into the tubers.
Sweet potatoes are really quite tender, so handle them gently: sort and crate them in the field. Condition at 80–85 F/27–29 C for 10 days to 2 weeks near a furnace or a warm chimney, maintaining high humidity by covering the stacked crates (which have wooden strips between for spacing) with plastic sheeting or a clean tarpaulin, etc. Then store in fairly dry and warm conditions (see chart). Like Pumpkins and Squashes, they damage from chill below 50 F/10 C.
Tomatoes, Mature Green
For storing, harvest late but before the first hard frost, and only from vigorous plants. Wash gently, remove stems, dry; sort out all that show any reddening and store these separately.
Pack no more than two layers deep with dry leaves, hay, straw, or shredded paper (plastic bags with air holes are more likely to cause decay). Sort every week to separate faster-ripening tomatoes. See the chart.
Turnips
These and rutabagas withstand fall frosts better than most other root crops, but don’t let them freeze/thaw/freeze. Storage odor can penetrate up from the basement, so store them by themselves outdoors (see chart for conditions).
Handle like Beets; pack in moist sand, peat, etc.
Waxing Turnips and Rutabagas
A number of readers have asked about the feasibility, and then the procedure, for waxing rutabagas and turnips the way commercial growers do, to prevent the vegetables’ odor from spreading and to protect the skins. As to feasibility: not really practical for the usual householder. The vegetables must be dunked in the melted wax (it’s plain old paraffin wax, the sort on hand to seal jellies and jams), and there must be enough of it in liquified form. And it must be just the right temperature—too cool and it globs, too hot and it scalds. And the air in the room must be just right as well, lest the wax break off before it penetrates the pores of the skins. (Remember, too, that rodents like paraffin wax.)
Better to use the most clinging of the food-grade plastic wraps, bought in extra-large rolls from your farm-supply/garden-and-seed store. Press the wrap tightly around each separate vegetable; you can bag several together, or put them in a large carton or bin.
If you do want to try waxing, though, be sure the rutabagas or turnips are clean and absolutely dry before you dunk them.
23
Putting by Presents for Christmas
By the middle of May, you can start putting by presents for the following Christmas, and keep adding to the trove on up to the day itself. And you don’t have to save all the presents only for the big holiday: they’re great fun to have on hand for favorite hostesses in the drearier winter