Preserving the fall harvest

By Rennie Phillips

For the past week or so we have been digging our sweet potatoes. If it wasn't for the vines, it would be relatively easy. The vines make it difficult. Our sweet potatoes did decent. They didn't do well enough to brag about, but there is enough to last us through the winter. We planted some in a clay soil and they did awful. We also planted some in a sandy soil and they did real well.

They looked so good I had to try them. I knew better, but I still had to. So I peeled four or five of the small ones and boiled them. Boy, did they look good. But the taste was less than stellar. They simply weren't as sweet and they didn't have that sweet potato taste. I knew I needed to cure them or harden them off, but I got in a hurry.

After digging one's sweet potatoes, one needs to store the potatoes in a warm room at about 80 to 85 degrees. Some say to have the room real humid, but I don't think that's as important as the temperature. I'd circulate the air as well. Store them at this temperature for a couple weeks. That should do the trick. Then cool down the room and just let them rest. A week or two later, the sweet potato taste should be there.

One of my favorite fall veggies is butternut squash. Several years ago we bought some butternut squash, but they just didn't taste right. What I came to realize is they hadn't been cured or hardened off. The best way to cure or harden off butternut squash is to keep them in a fairly warm room (80 to 85 degrees) for a couple weeks or so. It is best to have a fan in the room to circulate the air. It's also a good idea to roll the squash over regularly. As the butternut squash hardens off or cures, the skin will get harder and harder. Cured or hardened off butternut squash should last until almost spring if stored in a cool room. This hardening off is necessary for spaghetti squash as well.

Acorn squash, on the other hand, don't need hardened off. They won't last very long, so they need to be eaten first of all. Usually there is a kind of orange circle or orange/yellow spot on them when they are ready to eat.

We like to slice both the butternut and acorn squash in half, dig out the seeds and then nuke it with the flesh down. When it's about done, I like to turn it over and add some butter and brown sugar in the hole. Nuke it a little more with the hole up and you are ready to enjoy. You also can put it in the oven. I'll bet there are a thousand and one recipes on the internet. We prefer just plain butter as a seasoning.

My brother in Nebraska pulls a good bunch of radishes and covers them with sand in a 5-gallon bucket. He stores the bucket in a cool place. Then when he gets a hankering for a radish in the winter he digs down in the bucket for a radish or two. I believe the radishes he stores are the large black radish or the large fall or winter radish.

Marge's mom, when she was living in Nebraska, would dig some of her carrots and store them in the cellar in an old crock. She would put sand around them just as Mick does his radishes. Marge said later on in the winter her mom would dig some of the carrots out to add to a beef roast.

Usually in the fall I have turnips of some kind almost daily. Today I had boiled ones for breakfast and dinner. I also had a raw one with salt this evening. One thing I've noticed is that turnips taste better as the weather cools down, especially at night. I had one lady a couple years ago want 25 pounds of turnips to store in her basement. She said they would last way up into the winter. She wanted me to cut the stems off three or four inches long.

You can also store your turnips right in the ground. Simply cover them with several inches of straw. I planted turnips in one of our high tunnels this fall, so I'm curious how they do through the winter. Last winter I left a row of beets, which we dug in the spring. The beets were amazingly good. I was surprised -- pleasantly surprised.

Many of my friends pick the last of their tomatoes and then store them until they ripen. I don't. They taste so different, I just can't eat them. Some roll each tomato in a piece of newspaper, while others just store them. Through the summer when I was pulling a row of tomato plants, I'd pick off the larger tomatoes and store them in our cool room. They would go ahead and ripen and we'd can them. They just didn't taste as good as fresh, right out of the garden tomatoes.

Dad used to plant a lot of potatoes, probably half an acre. He used the plow to dig them so it wasn't that difficult. We'd pick them up and haul them to an old dirt floor cellar that my Grandpa Piihl had built. It was a half circle made of blocks. We would dump the potatoes on the dirt floor along both sides. These potatoes would last all winter and then there would be enough to plant next spring.

If you have some special way of preserving the harvest, drop me a note. I'd like to learn new ways.

Until next time.