Oliver Pemberton
Sort Your Store Before You Store Anything
The difference between a harvest that sees you through to March and a festering heap of mush usually comes down to the first hour after picking. Anything you plan to keep needs to be in perfect condition, because one bruised or nicked specimen can spoil a whole crate. Sort as you go: eat the damaged ones first, keep only the sound ones for storage.
Timing matters too. Lift root crops while the soil is dry, pick fruit slightly under-ripe, and harvest onions and garlic when their tops have flopped over but before rain sets in. Never store wet produce. If it has been raining, spread your crops out somewhere airy and dry them off thoroughly before they go anywhere near a box.
Curing: The Step Everyone Skips
Curing is simply letting a crop dry and toughen its skin so it resists rot in storage. It is the single most useful habit you can build.
- Onions and garlic: spread them on a rack or mesh tray in a warm, dry, airy spot for two to three weeks, then plait or net them and hang somewhere cool and dark.
- Winter squash and pumpkins: leave them in a sunny spot for ten days to two weeks until the skin is hard enough that a fingernail won't dent it. Keep a short stalk attached — a broken one is an open door for mould.
- Potatoes: leave maincrops on the surface for a few hours to dry, then in a dark, cool place for a fortnight to let the skins set before bagging.
- Shallots: treat exactly like onions and they will outlast them by months.
Root Vegetables: Cool, Dark and Just Damp
Carrots, parsnips, beetroot, swede and celeriac all want the same basic conditions: a temperature between 2°C and 5°C, high humidity and complete darkness. A shed, garage, unheated cellar or north-facing larder works well. Fridges are excellent for small quantities too.
Layer them in boxes of slightly moist sand, spent potting compost or dry-ish leafmould, making sure the roots don't touch each other. Keep the medium barely damp — a squeeze should hold together, not drip. Dry air makes roots shrivel; wet air makes them rot. Check the boxes every few weeks and remove anything soft immediately.
If you would rather not lift them, leave parsnips, leeks and winter brassicas in the ground and pull them as needed. A thick mulch of straw or bracken keeps the soil workable in all but the hardest frosts.
Fruit: One Bad Apple Really Does Spoil the Lot
Apples, pears and quinces store far better than most people expect. Wrap each fruit in newspaper or place them in single layers on slatted trays, stalk down, in a cool, dark, slightly humid room. Pears need picking before they soften on the tree; they ripen in store rather than on the branch.
Keep varieties separate, check the trays weekly and eat any that show the first brown spot. Apples give off ethylene, which speeds ripening, so store them away from other produce. Soft fruit will not keep fresh for long: freeze it on trays first so the berries stay separate, then tip into bags.
Drying, Freezing and Fermenting Herbs and Gluts
Drying is the oldest trick in the book and still one of the best for herbs and chillies. Tie soft herbs such as thyme, oregano and bay in small bunches and hang them upside down in a dark, airy room until they crumble. Strip the leaves and keep them in airtight jars away from the light. Chillies and tomatoes dry beautifully in a low oven or dehydrator at around 60°C.
Freezing suits almost anything you cannot eat fast enough. The trick is to blanch green vegetables for one to two minutes, then plunge them into iced water before bagging, which locks in colour and texture. Tomatoes freeze whole and skin easily once thawed. Courgette, beans and peas are all far better frozen than wasted.
Fermenting and pickling turn gluts into something you will actually look forward to eating. Sauerkraut, kimchi, pickled beetroot, chutney and roasted tomato sauce in sterilised jars can absorb an enormous amount of surplus in an afternoon. Just remember that jars need a cool, dark cupboard, not the sweltering shelf above the cooker.
Keep an Eye on Things Through the Winter
Storage is not a case of filling boxes in October and forgetting about them until spring. A quick weekly inspection, a hand through the nets and a glance at the sand boxes will catch problems while they are still small. Rot spreads fast in a closed space, so remove any suspect item the moment you spot it.
Record roughly what you put away and how long it lasted. After a season or two you will know that your shed is too warm for carrots, or that the squash should have been cured a week longer, and your next winter store will be better for it. There is a real pleasure in eating your own potatoes and onions in February, with the seed catalogues open on the kitchen table.
