What's the best way to store vegetables?

Date published: 11/9/2002

"SOMETHING THAT MIGHT be useful for your 'Worth Trying' box," a fellow gardener said to me the other day as we were both in line buying coffee, "is that you can pick green tomatoes and they will ripen if you pack them right."

We discussed this a bit, talking about various ways to keep the tomatoes from rotting before they ripened, and how long one might expect them to keep. We agreed that the best way to have tomatoes from one's own vines over the winter was to pick them before a freeze, dry them well, wrap them in newspaper, and store in a cool basement or garage.

I put them in a basket so that air can circulate freely through the stored vegetables. I also check every now and then, and discard any tomatoes going bad, lest they infect others. I have no objection to eating green tomatoes, either fried or in green tomato relish, which will improve any hamburger or hot dog one wants to put it on. But having ripe tomatoes from one's own vines is not to be sneezed at. I have more than once served fresh tomatoes from my garden for Christmas dinner.

One can store apples the same way, though it is not a good idea to store them side by side, for apples among tomatoes will hasten their ripening. The winesaps that we grew in North Carolina were good keepers and, unless we got a bit too hungry for them, often lasted into the following year. We stored them in baskets lined with burlap, layering sawdust and apples, being careful that the apples did not touch one another.

It would be a bit chancy to use this process today, unless one produced one's own sawdust and knew that none of it came from pressure-treated wood, which would contaminate the apples and make them unsafe to eat. It would be better to treat the apples the same way as the tomatoes and wrap them in newspaper. Whether one is storing apples or tomatoes, store only firm and unbruised ones. Bruised ones should be used right away, for they will surely not keep long enough to justify wrapping and storing them.

Date published: 11/9/2002