Dear Helen: This is the first year for my fuzzy kiwis to produce a sizeable harvest and I have a question about their storage and ripening. I do recall from reading your columns that the kiwis need to be stored in refrigeration temperatures and I do have a protected outdoor storage structure, but temperatures have been warm this fall, at least a few degrees above fridge temperatures. I don’t have room in my fridge for them. What to do?
N.N.
I’m in a similar situation, with an unheated storage room attached to the house at the end of the carport. Ideally, storage temperatures for unripened kiwis should be barely above freezing, which my unheated store room used to come closer to after the late autumn harvesting. Not anymore. Like last year, daytime high temperatures so far this year have been warm for the season, around 7 or 8 C.
As a result I’m finding the kiwis that I bring in to the kitchen and place in a slightly ventilated plastic bag with an apple are ripening very fast — as quickly as in four days. I prefer to peel and eat them while the fruit is still very firm, but no longer completely hard.
Having very limited storage space that remains adequately cold for long term storage is an issue. For this reason I’ve been giving shallow flats of the fruit away to families who will enjoy them while they are still fairly freshly harvested. Neighbours, friends, and people who have extended me various forms of help and kindness all are offered kiwis to enjoy. There will still be plenty left for my own use.
Dear Helen: In a recent column you described different kinds of root structures, such as bulbs, corms, tubers and rhizomes. You list begonias among the tubers. I always understood that begonias, at least the large-flowered ones we grow in summer hanging baskets, develop from corms.
K.R.
I have noticed some online sources do refer to begonia “corms,” but that is not correct. The hanging basket and other large-flowered types of begonias are called tuberous begonias because they grow from tubers.
Other types of begonias have different root structures. Wax begonias have fibrous roots. Others have rhizomatous roots. But the large-flowered ones we grow outdoors in summer and whose root structures we store frost-free in winter grow from tubers, which are flattish rounds with a fibrous coating.
Corms have a different, more bulb-like, conical shape. Crocus corms are a familiar example.
Dear Helen: I keep hearing and reading about the importance of keeping the soil protected with some sort of organic covering over the winter. I’m wondering whether a garden plot can be left covered and unplanted for an entire growing season if it is not needed.
C.S.
Few home gardens these days have enough growing space to leave any of it unoccupied over a whole growing season, but where this is possible it can have many benefits.
Leaving land “fallow” in this way is an old custom of giving the land a restorative rest. Leaving soil to rest, covered well to prevent erosion and to retain moisture, allows it to recover, re-balance, and store organic matter. The resting period also helps to disrupt the life cycles of some pests and diseases.
I remember an acquaintance at an experimental farm telling me about leaving half his own vegetable growing area covered and fallow for a year. In the following year, the other half was left fallow.
The results surprised him: Plantings made in soil that had been left fallow for a year produced twice as much food ad areas that had not had that period of rest.
Dear Helen: In the coming year I want to grow mainly vegetables that are very water-thrifty. The family’s favourite vegetable is carrots. Do they require copious amounts of water?
D.C.
Carrots that are seeded as early as possible, while he soil is still full of moisture, have the best chance of having developed to the stage of elongating their roots down into cool, moist soil layers by the time hot, dry weather arrives. I aim for a seeding as early as possible in March.
If the plants are still very young when it turns hot, watering as regularly as possible and arranging shade cloth over the planting help to keep the carrots developing well.
