Putting Up Fruit for the Winter: A Nectarine Harvest
A little bit of exciting news! Our September nectarine was finally ready to be harvested in mid October… That meant lots of nectarines all at once. When I mean lots of them, I mean several six foot by two foot tables full of nectarines. Harvests like this can be both overwhelming and absolutely satisfying. For the last week my house has smelled like drying nectarines.
Nothing makes me feel more like a millionaire than harvesting lots of something that we grew. I would estimate we brought in six bushels of nectarines. Which means lots of fruit for the fall, winter and even spring.
How will we preserve all of these? It’s really easy! We’ll dry them, freeze them and turn some into fruit leather. But drying is really the best way to go about it. You can pack a huge number of dried nectarines into a half gallon jar. They can be reconstituted with hot water for use in pies, cookies, oatmeal, cakes, anything sweet you can think of.
Drying stone fruits is super easy. Wash and let air dry if needed. Always make sure to put your fruit on a flat surface in a single layer. Fruit that is left to sit in a bowl, like the one in the picture above, will bruise and begin to rot right away. There is nothing more disheartening than seeing fruit you waited so long for begin to mold.
These nectarines were super clean, so we just started slicing them up and putting them on trays. We air dry them with a fan and bit of sun time.
We realized halfway through that we need to build a much bigger drying cabinet. My garden partner is a really creative guy and engineered a drying box that is two feet wide by two feet deep by three feet tall. Unfortunately, we won’t have it built in time to get all these nectarines dried, so we’ve rigged up a large piece of screen stapled to some 2x4’s and will sun and air dry the remaining ones before we get our first frost this weekend. I will certainly show an update when we do get it built!
Being able to eat as many nectarines as I want without having to ration them because they were a zillion dollars at the grocery store feels amazing. If you have a yard and can plant your favorite fruit tree in the spring, I highly recommend you do! Then you can feel rich too!
Do you love nectarines? What’s your favorite fruit? Leave a comment below.
