Storing Pumpkin

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Pumpkin is one of the most popular plants that summer residents and gardeners grow in their beds. This vegetable crop has a huge number of advantages. Unlike many other vegetable crops, pumpkin is not so demanding and capricious in terms of care, and its benefits are really huge

It will be easy even for a beginner to grow a plant. The pumpkin is harvested in the autumn season, and the vegetable itself is added to many delicious and healthy dishes.

The pumpkin vegetable contains many minerals and vitamins that are found in the pulp and pumpkin seeds. In the winter season, these substances are able to tone the human body, as well as increase immunity, creating resistance to colds. Also pumpkin is very often used in diets and nutrition for children. They prepare pumpkin and stew, and porridge, and jam, and juices, and much more. It all depends only on the imagination of the hostess herself.

But you still need to take care of the storage conditions of the pumpkin in advance in order to enjoy its taste in winter.

Collecting and storing pumpkin during the winter season

For the successful storage of such a vegetable crop as pumpkin in the winter season, special conditions must be prepared in advance. Usually pumpkin can be stored from three months to two years, but here it all depends on the type of vegetables. In order to avoid troubles in the form of dry pulp, loss of vitamins, lack of taste or rotting, you should only pick healthy vegetables, free from diseases and other defects. In the modern world, summer residents are offered a choice of a huge number of varieties and types of pumpkin, which bear fruit at different times, and the vegetables themselves can have different shapes and colors. It is due to this that gardeners have to collect pumpkins from mid-August to November. The most difficult thing is for a summer resident in the middle lane, in the Urals and in Siberia. Here sometimes you have to collect unripe fruits and create the necessary conditions already indoors.

However, even here, with the help of certain knowledge, pumpkin fruits can be saved. Fruits with a hard, cork-like stalk, with wilted leaves, with a strong bark of a vegetable or with a reddish color, indicating the ripeness of the fruit, are subject to storage.

After the harvest has been carried out, summer residents always try to comply with the terms and conditions for harvesting pumpkin, very carefully cutting off the fruits. The stalk remaining on the pumpkin should be about four to six centimeters long. In that situation, if, due to some reason and circumstance, the stalk of the pumpkin is absent, then at the place of its attachment, most likely, after a short period of time, harmful bacteria will appear, after which the fruit itself will begin to rot. The same happens if you store pumpkin damaged by animal rodents or mechanically, vegetables with bruises and cracks.

It is better to choose sunny days without rain as the time to harvest the pumpkin crop. At this point, the vegetables can be placed in a special drying area, which will be illuminated and well ventilated. Then, when the weather allows the fruits to be left to dry for a longer period, summer residents can leave the pumpkin there for a week. This time is enough for the bark of vegetables to become stronger and harder. The pulp will acquire a sweeter taste, and small cracks in the pumpkin bark will heal. It is these fruits that are best stored in the winter season. When eaten, you can appreciate the juiciness and taste of vegetables.

It is best to store pumpkin fruits in dry but well-ventilated basements. The optimal temperature will be the limit of five to ten degrees. Thus, the pumpkin will be in a state that resembles hibernation. As a result, there are no vital processes in the fruits, except for the evaporation of water and the deformation of starch into sugar. In a place with humid air and lack of ventilation, there is a risk of soon getting foci of mold or rot on the surface of vegetables, after which the defects will spread to the pulp. Colds with subzero temperatures have a very negative effect on pumpkins. This provokes softening of the bark and rotting of the fruit.

Before storing pumpkin, summer residents need to properly take care of the place where the process will take place. The racks and pallets for this procedure must be dry and clean. The fruits themselves should not have contact with the floor, walls and each other.