A Storage Note

Last fall a majority of our garden vegetables ended up being blanched, vacuumed sealed and frozen.  What we didn’t freeze ended up in our Cold Room.

When storing in the cold room, we placed the potatoes, onions and garlic in burlap bags so they could breathe and the carrots were packed in sand in plastic bins.

As the end of March approaches we are noticing a significant reduction in our vegetable stash: there is only one pack of turnip left, a handful of packs of swiss chard, peas and beans, about 1/3 of the potatoes, ½ the carrots and the onions, garlic and shallots are long gone.  (Note: In the fall  we ended up with around 160 pounds of potatoes and 2.5 - 20 gallon plastic tubs of sand packed carrots.)

We’ve noticed the Yukon Gold Potatoes store a lot better than the Red Norlands.  The red potatoes are softening and starting to sprout while the Yukon Gold are sprout free and are as firm and crisp as the day they were harvested.

The carrots, despite the odd top trying to grow, are firm and crisp and are showing very little sign of drying out and decay.  In the past, we haven’t had this sort of luck with our carrots.  Over our few years of gardening, we have found that different varieties and different storage methods have a significant impact on the duration you can store carrots; and I’m sure this applies to other veggies as well.

The first year we had our garden we stored the carrots in a plastic tub packed in sand; they did ok, but many become soft and dried out over time.  The second year we grew the same carrot but stored them packed in sand in a plywood box; we will never to do this again as the wood absorbed the moisture from the sand leaving the carrots soft and wrinkly very early in the winter.  This (or last) year we went back to plastic, to keep the moisture in the sand, and grew a carrot variety that was good for storing.

When storing vegetables, it seems as though there is an element of luck to it.  Keep in mind though there are also a few things you can do to improve your “luck.”  When shopping for seeds consider how you plan to store or process your vegetables.  Most seed descriptions specify if they are good for canning, freezing, or storing- I look for these qualities in the seeds I buy to ensure that we can get the most out of the garden for many months after the final harvest.