How to store a melon for a long time without losing its beneficial properties

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It takes a month and a half and the collapse of melons and watermelons on the market disappear. How to store melon at home fresh, is it possible to find a place in the city apartment for this fragrant fruit? These questions worry lovers of fresh garden products. Vintage experience of melon growers and new technologies allow using melon until February. There are several proven ways to store delicate fragrant melons in order to please your loved ones with a fresh slice in the middle of winter.

Melon preparation for storage

In order to enjoy ripe, fragrant melon in the middle of winter, a number of conditions must be fulfilled:

select fruits of certain varieties;
carry out the correct cleaning:
correctly select the copies for storage.

Most adapted for long-term storage of melons Gulab and Torpedo, according to local Mirzachul. For storage, fruits are chosen unripe. But the aroma from the melon should already be on. Green fruits will not pick up the taste, spoil. Choose vegetables without the slightest external surface flaw. Dark spots are signs of internal rotting. Too soft spout tells about overripe pulp, which is not to be stored. Cracks, dents, scratches should not be.

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The chosen fruit is torn off from the vine by hands, leaving a tail at least 3 cm. Cleaning should be carried out in cloudless weather. In the sun, melons are kept for several days, turning them over with another side in the sun for better warming. During the time spent on the garden, the fruit acquires the properties necessary for storage.

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How to save a melon for the winter

There is a basic rule of a melon grower. If the melon needs to be preserved for several months, this is done at the place of harvest. Goods are sent to the place of sale after storage. In the southern republics arrange clay adobe premises with a wall thickness of about a meter. There it is constantly in the summer of 10-13 degrees Celsius, in the winter around 2-6 0. In this melon the fruits of winter varieties persist until spring.

Humidity in the room should be no more than 80%, otherwise the appearance of rot is inevitable. Need and airing. But most importantly, the melon should be stored separately from other vegetables, as it absorbs alien odors, and apples accelerate the ripening of the pulp.

To preserve, each fruit is arranged in a separate woven mesh and suspended so that the pumpkins do not touch each other and the walls. Once a month they conduct an audit of the fruit, discarding with any flaws. The darkened flesh can not be eaten, it becomes poisonous.

How to keep a melon for the winter in the absence of a special room? Another way is to place the fruit on a soft bedding on the racks in the cellar. At the same time melons should not touch each other and designs. In a small number of gifts cottages stored in wooden boxes on a bed of sand, clean sawdust or ash. In such a container, the fruit is half-filled with a soft composition, setting it vertically, with the stem down. Before the laying the tail has already fallen off, there remains a small spot, which is good to grind or paraffin.

Such boxes can be stored only far from the potatoes, otherwise the melon will pull the earthy smell. The fragrance is gone. From the boxes, the fruit is carefully removed and inspected every month. In addition to the existing varieties of long shelf life, a new variety of smooth yellow melon weighing up to 4 kg has appeared in the middle lane. Early ripening, high taste and excellent keeping quality are characteristic of the new variety Yellow Canary.

Read also: Traditional methods and recipes of the peoples of the world preparing cilantro for the winter

In an apartment near the balcony door, the fruit can lie for a month. Late-ripening varieties Zimovka and Bykovchanka are unlikely to grow in the middle lane, but lie in warm lands for about 6 months. These varieties have a strong crust and a high content of pectin.

There is such an indicator of keeping quality from the moment fruit is harvested from a gourd:

low keeping quality less than 15 days;
low-lasting - up to 30 days;
midrange - up to 60 days;
lezhky - up to 90 days;
very lezhzhie those that are stored for more than three months.

How to keep a melon in the apartment?

Sometimes in the apartment the fruits are kept in limbo in equipped cabinets with a special microclimate. More often there is a problem of storage for several days. In room conditions with shading the whole intact ripe melon is stored for 2 days. At the same time, it should be placed on a soft bedding in the coolest part of the apartment. If the fetus is not quite ripe, then it will lie for a week. About the degree of maturation will tell the spout, if it is elastic, then the flesh is still firm. A strong aroma emanating from the fruit speaks of its maturity.

Many housewives put ripe tomatoes in storage in the fridge, and wonder why tomatoes changed their taste, became fibrous and watery. The same happens with melon, but not so noticeable.

There is a list of foods that can be stored in the refrigerator. Melon in this list is not. That is, the fruit, even cut, better preserves the taste and aroma in room conditions. However, the sweet pulp promotes reproduction of harmful microflora on the open surface. How much can you store sliced melon in the refrigerator is easy to solve. In a special container with an airtight lid, you can store no more than 2 days. If the fruit is undamaged, it will lie on the lower shelf in the vegetable department for more than a week.

Hygiene must be kept in mind. All foods in the refrigerator should be stored in sealed packaging. This will keep the individual flavor of each product. To this end, the industry produces containers of various volumes with tight lids. In such containers the storage of various semi-finished products is very convenient.