For years, I have had a strange connection to decay and rot. Around 22 years ago, I plunged into my graduate studies, with a focus on evaluating a potential treatment for the prevention of post-harvest potato pathogens and their associated diseases. It was the start of a multi-year journey around the underbelly of the potato tuber and storages. I saw (and smelled) lots of gnarly looking spuds. It was gross, but informative.
Jump back in time a few years prior to that, and you will find me in a classroom learning about post-harvest handling and storage of vegetables. I started to learn about all of the different things that affect the post-harvest lifespan or storability of the perishable vegetable crops. We looked at physiological maturity, temperature, relative humidity, the makeup of the air, as well as other factors. We also looked all of the different points within the harvest and post-harvest process where things can change. It was (and still is) fascinating and complex.
At that time, I was exposed to a couple of different principles (a.k.a. “laws”), both of which have always stuck with me.
The first law is that with all perishable products, you cannot prevent the inevitable. All produce is on a downward slide towards decay and the compost pile. Sometimes that slope is steep and brutally quick. For others, it is gradual. Regardless of what the slope is, all you can do is try and slow down that slide, to stretch things out as much as you can until the consumer can … well, consume it.
The second law is related to the first, simply being that you cannot appreciably improve a product’s quality after it has been harvested. You might stabilize some products, and fortify their armour a titch (See “Putting on Your (Vegetable) Armour – Pre-storage Preventative Measures”), but that is it. You can wash it, polish it, and package it up nicely, but the first law cannot be circumvented. Accepting that, it becomes critical to ensure that whatever produce you want to store is of the HIGHEST quality possible when you start, as it is all downhill from that point onward.
So, this second law of storage is essentially this; G.I.G.O. Garbage. In. Garbage. Out. If you try and store garbage, you will only ever come out with garbage at the end of it.
What Does it All Mean?
Put simply, use care and consideration in all of your harvest and post-harvest processes. Do not spend an entire season growing something, only to ruin your chances for a profit by cutting corners at harvest. Calibrate your equipment, to prevent bruising or damaging of the crop. Handle things carefully during and after harvest, as well as any time you have to handle the product. Harvest product at the right level of maturity and keep things as cool as you can to start with (unless the product does not like that). Store product in the correct conditions. Monitor those conditions carefully. Do the best that you can to communicate the ongoing handling and storage requirements of each product to your customers (or whomever is going to have your product next in the chain). And if you have something that is not going to make the grade, either cull it and dispose of it, or sell (or process) it as quickly as possible, so that it can be consumed and not wasted.