Acquired a bountiful harvest? Now, preserve it recent for months to come back! Correct storage is essential to making sure that your produce stays recent and retains its dietary worth.
Curing entails inserting greens in a heat, dry, and well-ventilated space for a number of days to permit their skins to toughen and minor wounds to heal. This course of helps lengthen their shelf life and protect their high quality after harvesting.
The next excerpt is from Past the Root Cellar by Sam Knapp. It has been tailored for the net.
Photograph courtesy of Phil Knapp.
Curing
Curing is a normal time period describing the additional steps that put together sure greens for storage. Most veggies don’t want any curing previous to storage. The few that do embody winter squash and pumpkins, potatoes, candy potatoes, and alliums like onions, garlic, and shallots. The circumstances wanted for curing and the physiological modifications that happen are totally different for every vegetable/group.
For winter squash and pumpkins, curing helps to harden their pores and skin, heal wounds, dry down their stems, and switch starches into sugars like sucrose and glucose. (The proper and full of life time period for that little bit of plant tissue connecting a squash fruit to the vine is peduncle.)
In some climates, winter squash and pumpkins can remedy within the discipline, however in some areas, farmers must create the suitable circumstances.
Holding squash at 75 to 85°F (24 to 29°C) and 50 to 70 p.c relative humidity (RH) for per week or two often completes the curing course of and improves their efficiency in long-term storage. (Observe that not all forms of squash want curing, and a separate curing step isn’t needed in all climates.)
Onions remedy within the attic of the storage constructing at Offbeet Farm, the place it’s dry and heat, particularly on sunny days.
Although potatoes and candy potatoes are from completely totally different plant households, the physiology behind their curing is comparable. Each crops undergo a strategy of suberization whereas curing, whereby a waxy protecting layer varieties over the pores and skin and wounds.
This layer prevents moisture loss and protects towards an infection from micro organism and fungi. Widespread knowledge says that skins thicken throughout the curing course of, however in actuality, the outermost pores and skin layers simply connect extra firmly to the tissue beneath. Whereas potatoes can remedy below a variety of circumstances, a temperature between 54 and 59°F (12 and 15°C) is finest for pace and stopping pathogen progress. The humidity ought to be excessive, at about 80 p.c. Candy potatoes require an identical humidity however a lot hotter temperatures, ideally between 82 and 86°F (28 and 30°C).
Garlic and onions, together with shallots, can remedy as soon as they’ve totally matured and have entered a state of dormancy.
Heat and dry circumstances over a number of weeks dry out their outermost scales, which change into arduous and flaky. Though they’ll remedy in a variety of temperatures and humidities, optimum circumstances vary from about 80 to 90°F (27 to 32°C) and 50 to 70 p.c RH. The dry outermost layers shield onions and garlic from water loss and pathogens. In each onions and softneck garlic, it’s additionally necessary that the necks dry and contract throughout the curing course of to stop the entry of pathogens.
After I was first beginning out, curing appeared a bit like alchemy to me.
I learn the recommendation from college extension providers, however I didn’t totally grasp the significance of curing to success in long-term storage. My first failure got here with onions, which I grew for my winter CSA throughout the first yr of Root Cellar Farm.
I began them from seed and diligently tended them below borrowed develop lights in the lounge of my rental home. (My neighbors and landlords undoubtedly thought I used to be rising one thing else.) I planted the seedlings and nurtured all of them summer season lengthy, they usually grew into fantastically plump bulbs I used to be pleased with. Had I offered them at a fall farmers market, it might have capped off a profitable first season.
As a substitute, I botched their preparations for storage, leaving them too lengthy within the discipline throughout a moist fall and inadequately curing them. My CSA prospects acquired lower than half of their onions that yr as a result of the bulbs grew mould round their necks and rotted from the highest downward in storage.
Winter squash nearly by no means remedy outside at my farm in Fairbanks, Alaska. As a substitute, I deliver them indoors and remedy them at 80°F (27°C) and 50 to 60 p.c RH for a few week. Photograph courtesy of Phil Knapp.
In subsequent years, I discovered to reap onions earlier to permit them extra time to dry below followers within the storage. I additionally turned cautious of rainfall on onions after their tops fell, a warning I harbor to this present day. (My warning is probably not completely warranted, although, as different farmers go away onions out in intermittent rain with out problem after tops have fallen.)
Curing wants can differ broadly from yr to yr and from place to position.
I confronted some steep studying curves after transferring from Michigan’s Higher Peninsula to inside Alaska, and I wanted to adapt my curing strategies to the brand new local weather. My greatest problem with curing in Alaska has been with winter squash.
In Michigan, winter squash and pumpkins often grew to full maturity on the vine—corky stems (ahem, peduncles), agency and waxy skins, floor spots, and so forth—however in Alaska’s abbreviated season, most winter squash barely eke out maturity earlier than frosts arrive. On prime of that, the climate round harvest time in late August and early September is often cool and moist. In Michigan, I had no points sun-curing my winter squash, both within the discipline or on the dry and sunny deck. In Alaska, I’ve to create these circumstances indoors.
Wherever you reside and no matter your typical climate patterns are, you have to be ready to remedy crops indoors if needed.
This may be particularly tough in case you develop a number of crops that want curing, and people crops remedy below totally different circumstances. In observe, you must determine which areas are conducive to curing and the way totally different crops would possibly overlap their time in these areas. Further areas that may be heated and ventilated as backups will enable you to take care of timing issues or unusually massive harvests.
It’s a useful coincidence that winter squash and pumpkins and the alliums remedy in related circumstances. Many growers use greenhouses to remedy these crops since heat and dry environments work for each. Heated retailers and sheds can even work for onions, garlic, and squash. Most farmers I do know rising candy potatoes use their storage areas for the curing interval as effectively, which eliminates further dealing with steps between the sphere and storage. It’s frequent for potato growers to remedy potatoes both in ambient circumstances (in different phrases, with out manipulating temperature or humidity) or of their potato storage areas, equally to candy potatoes.
You additionally must plan out your curing setups and gear.
Airflow is vital for all curing crops. The continually flowing air removes and distributes moisture, retains temperatures even, and prevents buildup of gases like carbon dioxide and ethylene. Preserve this in thoughts whenever you select containers or platforms for curing. I as soon as made the error of curing winter squash on plywood cabinets. With the impervious plywood and insufficient followers, humidity constructed up beneath my squash and I had issues with rot on their undersides.
This farm shops its candy potatoes and winter squash in the identical room however, due to their totally different wants,
doesn’t remedy them collectively. They remedy candy potatoes within the storage room (the place it’s simpler to take care of regular
temps and humidity), whereas winter squash be a part of the candy potatoes after curing within the greenhouse. In addition they remedy
onions within the greenhouse earlier than the winter squash. The farm cures garlic in a store constructing and has a storage
out there as backup in case of a bumper crop or an issue with one of many different areas.
Many farms, particularly these at small scales, remedy alliums and squash in single layers on wire racks or tables to maximise airflow throughout and below the crops. Some bigger farms remedy their onions and squash in bulk bins, both singly or in stacks. The trick right here is to position followers on prime of the bins, mendacity flat and pointing upward, to tug air up by way of them; it’s nearly all the time simpler to tug quite than push air by way of one thing. If the followers over the bins aren’t highly effective sufficient, you may enhance airflow within the stacks by wrapping the outsides, creating makeshift chimneys.
Farms that retailer issues like potatoes and onions in bulk piles usually use perforated pipes or culverts within the piles for air flow. Much like aerating compost, air flow pipes ship recent air to the bottoms of bulk piles to extra successfully preserve temperature and management moisture.
How a lot air flow is sufficient?
As a rule of thumb, air ought to be transferring, nonetheless subtly, at anywhere in a pile, stack, or bin of curing veggies. Utilizing your hand, you may attempt to really feel air motion below or by way of stacks or piles of veggies. For those who’re not sure, you may as well use smoke or mud to look at refined air motion.
By observing how the smoke strikes—up by way of the underside of a stack of bulk bins, for instance— you recognize air is actively transferring by way of your curing crops. If there’s not sufficient airflow, add extra or bigger followers.
Beneficial Reads
Harvest, Retailer, and Treatment Squash
Capturing the Crunch: Harvest and Retailer Cucumbers