How To Preserve Vegetables: Disinfection And Ventilation Of Storage Facilities, Storing Vegetables

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Improving the preservation of gifts of summer

Most summer residents and gardeners do not have the opportunity to preserve the crop grown on the site in the winter. Therefore, in recent years, it has been increasingly practiced to store the gifts of summer in basements and cellars. Unfortunately, as practice shows, due to a number of errors in storing grown crops, the share of spoilage of fruits and vegetables often reaches 50%.

At the same time, I can say this, based on my experience and the experience of many neighbors in gardening, it is possible to avoid large crop losses. It is only important to carry out the three most important measures: to disinfect the storage facilities, to provide ventilation in them, and also to comply with all the requirements for laying fruits and vegetables for storage.

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Disinfection of storage

Before carrying out it, it is necessary to do a thorough cleaning of the storage, during which all remnants of last year's products, soil, sand and other debris that inevitably accumulate on the floor and in the corners are removed from it. You should also thoroughly clean used racks and containers. Disinfection of the basement or cellar should be started no later than 2-3 weeks before the start of loading the gifts of summer. In this case, it is very important to decide in advance on the choice of a disinfectant, since the available recommendations are rather contradictory. For example, both I and other summer residents and gardeners on their plots prefer not to use, for example, cuprozan, tsineb and some other recommended preparations due to the fact that they have not been sufficiently tested by practice, and in the storage there will be vegetables and fruits that will go as food for our families. We usually restrict ourselves to lime substances, which we use in three variants in the treatment of storage facilities:

1. bleach dissolved in water at the rate of 300-400 g per bucket;
2. with the same lime solution, but with the addition of about 100 g to it per bucket of copper sulfate;
3. quicklime dissolved in warm water at the rate of 2-3 kg per bucket.

Since lime fumes are harmful, after processing, you should immediately leave the store and keep it in such conditions for at least three days with good ventilation.

Unfortunately, some summer residents and gardeners do not disinfect used racks and containers. The best option for this treatment is washing with a hot 5% soda solution.

I also know that some storage owners disinfect basements and cellars by fumigating them with sulfur dioxide. Before carrying out such processing in the store, all cracks and holes are first sealed, and then lump sulfur or sulfur blocks are ignited on a metal sheet or pallet. After that, the storage is closed tightly for two days, after which it is well ventilated, and all the racks and containers are whitewashed with a lime solution containing copper sulfate. Sulfur consumption usually does not exceed 100 g per 1 m³. I would also like to note that such disinfection can be carried out only if sulphurous gas is excluded from entering the dwelling, and also only if there are no metal structures and products in the storage frame or in the racks of the shelves - when exposed to sulfur, they are subject to severe corrosion.

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Storage ventilation

As experts recommend, most vegetables should be stored at 2-5 ° C and 90-95% humidity. Ventilation is designed to maintain these parameters within the specified limits. To do this, it is not at all necessary to resort to the exhaust pipes or ducts recommended in the special literature. As practice shows, ventilation can also be used either through a hole into the cellar (Fig. A), or with the help of simple devices built into the coating and representing a piece of hose, tube or a bundle of stems connected (Fig. B).

Storage (Figures A and B)

In the first case, the hole in the cellar for this is covered with a grate, covered with an old blanket or old clothes. In both branches, humid air accumulating in the cellar is released outside, due to which excessive dampness in the cellar disappears and the likelihood of frost or ice formation in it decreases. If it is required to raise the humidity in the cellar, then they resort to some overlap of the exhaust hole in the first case and a decrease in the thickness of the covering material in the second case.

As for the basements, the humidity in them is regulated by the partial opening or closing of plugs in the wall ducts. In my storage, I regulate moisture differently: I put a box of wet sand in the storage (if the air is too dry), or a box of quicklime (if the air is too damp). To control humidity, it is very useful to purchase and use any device: hygrograph, hygrometer, psychrometer, or others.

Storing products

Joint storage of fruits and vegetables in basements and cellars is undesirable. In my experience, for example, apples, when stored with vegetables, acquire a distorted taste and aroma. Therefore, I, like many other gardeners, practice storing fruits and vegetables in a package.

In the first case, for this purpose, I use wooden boxes, the bottom of which, the walls and the lid I cover with wrapping paper, sprinkling the fruits with sawdust or shavings. This allows you to keep the fruits of good quality, prevents their premature wilting and lengthens the shelf life. We wrap certain types of fruits with paper, without using sawdust and shavings.

But experienced gardeners and summer residents more and more often store root crops not in bulk, but in three-layer bags sewn from pieces of used lutrasil. At the same time, to improve the safety of root crops, they are either sprinkled with a mixture of sand (50%), lime-fluff and ash (50%), or they are powdered with an environmentally friendly sorbent "Ogorodnik", which is available for sale.

In conclusion, I would like to note that, as many years of experience have shown, when performing these simple measures, the safety of fruits and vegetables increases on average by 1.5 times, while simultaneously lengthening the shelf life by 2-3 months.

Also read:

• Potato harvest storage rules
• Growing and storing winter garlic
• How to save gladiolus bulbs and dahlia tubers until spring