2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Cloudberry is a very bright, tasty and healthy berry that both children and adults enjoy with undisguised pleasure. This amazing berry is used with equal success in cooking and in folk medicine, but not everyone knows how to properly collect and harvest cloudberries. It's time to fill this annoying gap in knowledge and find out how this is done after all
Where and how does cloudberry grow?
Cloudberry is quite widespread in the northern latitudes, or, to be more precise, in the forest-tundra and tundra. In forest conditions, this useful berry grows in the same way as cranberries, that is, near rivers and in swamps. This plant is very fond of high humidity, in addition, most often it can be seen growing in the shade.
When and how to collect?
Cloudberry is not a single berry, it tends to grow in a rather lush carpet, which is why it is very convenient to pick it both by hand and using a special harvester for picking berries. As a rule, cloudberries ripen in July (about forty-five days after the beginning of flowering), and its fruits are very similar to raspberries - they look like drupes consisting of several parts, while each part of such a drupe has a very impressive stone inside. Cloudberries are a close relative of raspberries, and sometimes these berries are even confused: the fact is that unripe cloudberries are colored in red tones similar to the color of raspberries, and ripe cloudberries can boast of a fairly saturated bright yellow color. If the cloudberry was collected exactly red, then it must be allowed to ripen.
It is necessary to collect cloudberries in such a way that in no way damage the berries that are vulnerable to the slightest pressure. Ideally, the berries should not be overripe, that is, it is best to pick cloudberries with a slightly reddish tinge and then let them ripen, rather than pick up a whole bucket of overripe berries and then not know what to do with them. The berries are usually picked together with the sepals, carefully placing them in containers of small height - this approach will help not to crush the berries and not damage them during transportation.
How to procure?
Before proceeding with harvesting or simply sending the cloudberries for storage, they must be sorted out, and this must be done very carefully so that the berries are not damaged. During sorting, all crumpled and painful berries, as well as heavily damaged specimens and berries with black spots are rejected.
If the cloudberries were harvested immature, then at home they will ripen very quickly. At the same time, you can let it ripen in different ways: firstly, you can simply put the berries together with the sepals in a fairly cool place (in such conditions, cloudberries usually ripen in just three days), and, secondly, it is quite acceptable to lay cloudberries in an even layer on a paper towel on the windowsill and leave it that way for two, three or four days.
Most often, cloudberries are either eaten fresh or made into a wonderful jam. And slightly unripe berries can be dried - for this they are laid out in a thin layer on pallets and laid out in well-ventilated rooms, where there is no direct access to the scalding rays of the sun. Plus, unripe cloudberries make great pickled berries! To prepare berries in this way, they are sorted out, poured into a jar and poured with boiled water (the water must be at room temperature). If desired, for every three liters of water, you can add half a glass of sugar. Next, the banks are covered with gauze and transferred to a cool place. Cloudberries in this form are perfectly stored from six months to two years! And the degree of its maturity in this case does not matter at all - there is no need to let the cloudberries ripen!
As for the harvesting of cloudberry leaves, used for the preparation of a wide variety of decoctions, they must be collected for these purposes when buds begin to form on the berry bushes and the flowering period starts - it is during this period that cloudberry leaves can boast the largest amounts of all kinds of useful substances. In this case, it is best to collect the lower leaves and those leaves that are in the middle of the stems. And one more important nuance - in order not to harm the plants, it is recommended to collect no more than one third of the total volume of leaves from each bush. If you neglect this rule, cloudberry bushes can start to hurt, and next year they are unlikely to please with a good harvest!
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