North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[anton ptak <antonptak@gmail.com>]

Steve - interesting.  We kept several sealed buckets of a few varieties 
in a friend's commercial cooler.  Unfortunately we hadn't aired the 
buckets out enough, so two varieties we ended up processing soon into 
chutney due to the pickle flavor being a little too pronounced.

To your point, though - our (non-pickle scented) sealed buckets of 
Liberty retained their texture marvelously, though it tasted as though 
they were slowly fermenting.  They got to the point around the end of 
the year where it was hard to eat them because they were so wine-y.  
Their texture was great though.  The other Liberties we stored in open 
boxes got somewhat shriveled and were much softer, but tasted like I 
think they should have.  It seemed that the buckets were sealed air 
tight but I cannot say for sure.  They did have rubber gaskets and very 
tight fitting lids that are meant to not leak liquid.

I do have plans to finally put our root cellar into service (with 
ventilation) for next year.


Anton Ptak
zone 4a W. Wisconsin



On 2/20/14 11:00 AM, nafex-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
> Howdy all,
> I fill refrigerators with apples every fall.  By christmas things start to
> soften and by february even the best keepers are mush.  I figure that my
> problem is ethylene buildup in the "sealed" fridge.  The gas would, of
> course, dissipate from a real root cellar.
>
> Any of you figured out (or bought) a good ethylene scrubbing system?  On
> line I see that you can buy little sachets that are designed to be placed
> in boxes of shipped flowers and such to prevent premature aging.  They
> don't seem like they would be practical for my purposes---too small,1,000
> minimum purchase, no way to know how many to use, when to replace, etc.
>
> Any ideas?  I can't be the only one using fridges for storage.  And I would
> think that everyone who does has this problem.  Thanks!
>
> Steve Herje,
> SW WI USA