The squirrels are leading the way: Walnuts are ideal for stocking up for the winter. A single walnut tree can easily produce 40 kilograms of fruit. In order to be able to benefit from the nuts for a long time, you should be careful when storing them.

Walnuts should be cleaned and dried before storage

Prepare and store walnuts

If you collect the walnuts yourself or harvest them from a tree in your own yard, you should wait until the nuts fall off the trees by themselves. Only then are they fully mature. In addition, you save yourself the tedious work of removing the green shells from the nuts: With ripe walnuts, they fall off by themselves.
Once you have the nuts at home, you should prepare them for storage as follows:

  1. Sort out nuts with damaged shells, traces of mold and blackened shells. These fruits do not keep.
  2. Rub the walnuts with a dry cloth or brush to remove any shell residue. These could encourage mold later. You should not clean them with a damp cloth, as this could cause the nuts to rot.
  3. Allow the walnuts to dry in a warm room for several weeks. A boiler room with temperatures above 20 °C is ideal. When drying, the nuts should be spread out over a large area so that no mold forms. Turn them over every few days.
  4. As soon as the walnuts are thoroughly dry, you can transfer them to storage containers to save space. Air-permeable jute bags, for example, are very suitable.
  5. For long-term storage, the walnuts are best kept in a cool storage cellar. A garden shed or garage are also suitable places. The room should be dark and no warmer than 16 °C. Make sure that mice do not have access to the nuts. Walnuts should not be stored in the refrigerator, as the air in them cannot circulate well and the nuts therefore tend to mold.
  6. Check the stored walnuts occasionally for mold and rot. Spoiled nuts must be sorted out immediately and those in the same container must be used up promptly.

Walnuts stored in this way have a shelf life of at least six months. If you carefully check the nuts for mold before eating, you can usually enjoy them much longer.

The garden journal freshness ABC

How can fruit and vegetables be stored correctly so that they stay fresh for as long as possible?

The garden journal freshness ABC as a poster:

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Vegetable garden