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Zucchini is a versatile and tasty vegetable, without which the dinner table looks too boring in the summer. If you know the secrets of how to preserve zucchini until late spring, then you can prepare them for as long as you want. Fortunately, the number of dishes that can be prepared from these fruits is so numerous that they can be served at least every day. Roasted with garlic, braised, baked, sweet zucchini( vegetable jam turns out to be excellent) - you can't count it all.
Which varieties are suitable for long-term storage?
In order to cook aromatic food from this vegetable in the summer, it is better to pick young small squash from the beds, the skin of which has not yet hardened and is easily damaged by external exposure. There is no seed in the core of the unripe vegetable, so you can cook it without cleaning out the middle part.
But only mature varieties of certain varieties can be successfully preserved until late spring. They are protected by a dense, rough skin, and the core is full of seeds that can be used for the next plantings.
The following varieties are suitable for long storage:
- Pear-shaped. Zucchini got this name because of the peculiar shape, resembling a pear. It has excellent taste properties. Dark orange color of pulp. The average weight is 1.3-1.5 kg.
- Yellow fruit. The widespread grade differing in excellent indicators of viability of seeds. Vegetables and until next summer will look like they just picked, if you know how to store zucchini with yellow skin in the winter.
- Little Ebony. An interesting and not very common vegetable, which got its name from the black-green peel. The flesh has an unusual, green color. The beneficial properties of tasty pulp can be maintained up to 2 months.
- Aeronaut. Favorite variety of gardeners, because the fruits ripen early, and after 1.5 months after the appearance of the first shoots of zucchini with dark green skin can be removed from the beds. They retain their qualities up to 4 months of storage, while they have a decent weight - up to 1.5 kg on average.
The storage time of zucchini depends on their preparation for wintering.
If you break the zucchini in wet weather and immediately put it in storage boxes, after a few weeks, the gardener will suffer fierce disappointment because the vegetables will start to rot.
Tips on how to store zucchini until spring include a useful recommendation: dry the fruit thoroughly before laying. But in no case can they be washed!
Too shortly cut the stalk cannot protect the vegetable from the penetration of pathogenic bacteria that cause decay. A leg, the length of which is not less than 5 cm, will help preserve the zucchini in complete safety. Vegetables 15–45 cm long are suitable for storage. They have dense thick peel and strong fruit stem. It is not necessary to lay the zucchini, which have ripened, because their taste is much inferior to earlier fruits, and they are stored much worse.
How to keep zucchini at home
If there is no basement or cellar, a reasonable question arises: how to store zucchini in a residential environment or in your house?
Vegetables are perfectly preserved in a residential area, if a dark, cool place is chosen for their storage. In order not to hesitate about the zucchini, for them it is necessary to find a free area where the spread out fruits will not catch the eye and spoil the aesthetic appearance of the room. It is important that they are dry and free from dirt, but they should not be washed with water. The best option is a dry cloth, which can easily remove dried dirt from the peel.
This may be a pantry or a place under the bed. Fruits can be decomposed in a special box. But if there is none, then zucchini is better to wrap in paper and in such a packed form to keep in a secluded corner. Do not leave vegetables in close proximity to heating devices or in damp areas where there is no heating.
If you use a refrigerator for these purposes, the duration of storage of zucchini is significantly reduced - up to 1 month.
But such conditions are best suited for early, immature fruits with thin skin that cannot be stored for a long time. A large number of young zucchini in the refrigerator does not fit, and there is no such need, because in the summer, new fruits very soon ripen.
Crop harvest in the autumn must be very carefully. For long storage, mature fruits are suitable, but not over-ripe and not under-ripe. In the overripe pulp, after a short period, it acquires a bitter taste, and the early fruits deteriorate due to the lack of protective “armor”, which protects the squash from temperature changes and pathogenic microorganisms. Succulent, medium-sized fruits with dense skin are perfectly preserved until spring.
