Editorial

Jo McCarroll takes the heat out of preserving summer's harvests

Ihave lost count of the number of times I have sensibly advised other gardeners – in person while talking at garden clubs, on the radio while answering gardening questions and through the very pages of this magazine – to plant successively in the edible garden to ensure their harvests ripen in a steady and manageable fashion, and they don’t find themselves with 14 whole cabbages needing to be eaten on the same day.

But if I am to be entirely honest with you, my dear reader, I fail to heed my own wise counsel. I grow a lot from seed and, as I am sure you know, it is easy to produce more seedlings than you have room to grow. And I try, I really do, to gift the excess to friends, family and neighbours or pot them up and drop them in at my local hospice shop. But somehow I always also squeeze in a few extra rows at home and pop a few plants in pots here and there and end up planting more – far more – than I can cope with. And this leads – as inevitably as death, taxes and powdery mildew in your cucurbits – to me standing in my kitchen at some stage over February, usually on what turns out to be the hottest day of the year, frantically trying to process 15kg of over-ripe tomatoes.

I am not sure if that scene is familiar to you. I hope not. But just in case, I will share the wisdom I have gleaned on preserving your harvest without having to hang over a hot stove this month from Preserving Food:

Freezing, Bottling and Drying, a useful little booklet put out several decades ago by the Home Science Information Service at the University of Otago.

First, freezing. If you have freezer space, then freezing is a great way to delay or even avoid altogether any more fiddly processing of your summer crops. Fruit “are amongst the most successful home-frozen products”, Preserving Food suggests. Berries for the most part can be frozen as is, while pears, apples, peaches and nectarines can be lightly cooked in sugar syrup first or made into pulp or puree for use in baking or jam (freeze only fruit that is fully ripe otherwise it can develop a bitter taste when it is thawed). With veges, any vege which requires cooking should freeze well, but many, including asparagus, beans, carrots and peas are best blanched first to set the colour and preserve the flavour (to blanch, briefly dip the veges in boiling water then immerse in icy cold water).

If you have a dehydrator or a solar dryer, most fruit can be dried too. Try apples, apricots, peaches, pears, figs and plums. Herbs are even easier to dry: harvest, wash and pat dry, and then leave to air dry on a sheet in the sun, or buy a few muslin bags at your $2 shop, fill about one-third full of fresh leaves (don’t over-fill or the leaves have a tendency to go mouldy) and then peg out on the washing line for a few dry and sunny days. You can freeze herbs too or wash, dry and use them to infuse vinegar or oil.

Still sound like too much trouble? Then simply focus on growing the fruit and vegetables varieties that have been bred to cope with a period of storage. The apples ‘Sturmer’, ‘Granny Smith’ and ‘Tydeman’s Late Orange’, and the pears ‘Winter Cole’ and ‘Winter Nelis’ can all be kept in a cool, dark and airy spot for a couple of months. With veges, the more robust root crops include the beetroot ‘Cylindra’, the carrot ‘Scarlet Nantes’, the pumpkin ‘Queensland Blue’ (or really any ironbark variety) and the aptly named onion ‘Pukekohe Long Keeper’. And you can store main crop spuds in a single layer in old wooden drawers or plastic laundry baskets lined with newspaper.

Do you know another way to preserve your excess crops without too much hard work? Send your tips or recipes to me at mailbox@ nzgardener.co.nz. I’ll try them, and publish the best ideas!