Planned spring planting plus knowing how to store crops at harvest time add up to fresh vegetables out of your garden in summer, fall, winter, and spring.
Of course, to have a greater variety and more interesting menus the year around, you’ll want to freeze or can some.
But, you know, there’s nothing like fresh, crisp, juicy vegetables. They taste better, are more wholesome, and require less work because they do not have to be processed.
Storing Winter Squash For Spring
Any standard variety of winter squash will last well into spring if stored properly. The longevity champ of my garden is that big fellow, green-warted Hubbard. It keeps going until next June.
Others like Buttercup and Delicious last to May. Even thinner-skinned Butternut, which my taste prefers, keeps into April.
Squash intended for winter storage should be harvested when fully ripe and handled carefully so that it is not bruised. Then, it must be cured.
Curing squash to harden its rind is simple. The fruit is allowed to sun itself for a week or so in a convenient outdoor spot where it can be protected against night frosts with adequate cover.
In storage, the fruit may be laid on the floor or a shelf in any cool, dry place. It keeps best at around 50° degrees temperature.
A spare bedroom is ideal because a cellar may be too humid and a basement too warm. From my own experience, I know that winter squash and winter guests get along nicely together in the same bedroom.
To be sure, green or blue squash may turn to a buttery yellow after a few months in storage, but if it does, all the better. That means it contains much more vitamin A.
Although they must be stored differently from squash, carrots, too, become more nourishing in storage. And they are not the only root crop that can be packed away for winter use.
Preparation For Storing Root Crops
Such others as rutabaga improved Long Island strain, and the large yet luscious Long Season beet can last through April without becoming flabby. The trick is simple.
After digging up root vegetables:
- Cut off their tops.
- Spray them with water.
- Remove garden soil clinging to them.
- Dry them in the sun for a few hours.
Then, some ordinary paraffin wax used in jelly-making is melted in a pan. The cut ends of the roots are dipped momentarily into this bath.
The wax hardens into a protective seal against drying out. Most root vegetables treated thus can be piled up anywhere in the basement or cellar. But because of their thinner skins, carrots need a little extra attention.
Storing Carrots
My favorite carrots are the red-cored Chantenay for a blocky sort and Nantes for a longer-shaped one, but any standard variety may be stored away.
It’s best, however, not to plant carrots intended for storage before June or early July so that they won’t be too large at digging time.
If carrots are to stay fresh, they must be damp. The humidity of the ordinary cellar or basement is not enough. It must be increased. Packing the roots in a damp but not soaking wet or air-tight packing medium will do.
Wooden Box or Bins For Ventilation
I use ordinary wooden boxes or bins with holes at the top and bottom for ventilation and pack carrots between inch-thick layers of that medium, which I have learned to use for all such purposes, that marvelous living sponge called sphagnum moss.
But moistened sand or fall leaves are suitable. Stored thus at temperatures ranging from 30° to 45° Fahrenheit, carrots retain their October freshness into the next June.
Storing Radish For Winter Use
Though it may be hard to believe, radishes, too, can be kept fresh and crisp over winter. Radishes may be fresh twelve months of the year.
This is how. In spring, plant the common red or white varieties. In June, plant summer kinds like the white Strasburg, a special Icicle type that keeps fat and fresh in hot weather. In July, plant one of the slow-maturing, tasty winter sports like the Chinese Rose.
A radish such as the last will be ready for the table in autumn and may be stored for winter use exactly as carrots are stored.
It will keep until next May when your first spring radishes will be ready if you’ve planned things right. Thus, many radishes help shorten the winter even as far north as I live in Middletown Springs, Vermont.
Other Vegetables Stored For Winter Use
But wait! The list of fresh vegetables available after Jack Frost’s arrival is not yet exhausted. Brussels sprouts left in the ground will continue producing until after the first snows.
Green tomatoes wrapped in newspapers and placed in cartons down in the basement will ripen into December.
There’s that delicacy, Chinese Cabbage, too. Because the heads of this vegetable matured in a crowd within a week or so and always became covered with a slimy rot when stored in the basement, I wondered for several years whether or not it was worth growing.
All that’s changed now. The heads still mature all at once, and I still store them in the basement, but they last into February. The difference is that now I treat this leafy vegetable like carrots. I pack it in sphagnum moss.
Other things are less finicky. The common cabbage, for example, is a dependable winter keeper. So are unspoiled apples when wrapped in newspapers and placed in a cool, humid spot.
Green Onions
Green onions? Their snappy taste is certainly welcome in winter! How do I get them? It’s easy.
You probably have onions trying to sprout anyway. Well, let ’em! Or plant onion sets on New Year’s Day or Groundhog Day in damp soil or moss in any kind of container that will serve as an indoor window box.
They’ll come up as green as spring. If you want a very early outdoor crop of onions, plant some onion sets about March 1 in the same cold frame you use to get the earliest lettuce and radishes.
Asparagus
Unless you are quite different, you like succulent asparagus fresh out of the garden. If so, here is another vegetable that shortens the winter.
Six weeks before you can expect anything from your earliest peas, your perennial bed of Mary Washington asparagus or one of its newer strains will be producing tender shoots that will be ready for cutting before you even dare plant most seeds.
If I have tempted you, there’s still time to plant asparagus this fall. Considerable controversy exists over methods of planting this vegetable.
Some prefer to plant the year-old asparagus roots according to traditional methods in deep trenches.
Some prefer to plant them more shallowly. In either case, the fall-planted asparagus bed should be mulched with a 5-inch layer of leaves or litter to protect it over winter.
Preparing The Bed
After the mulch is raked away the following spring, the bed should be left unmolested until the second spring, when a small harvest may be taken.
After that, fresh new shoots may be cut as fast as they appear until July brings peas.
44659 by William Gilman