Double The Shelf Life Of Your Leafy Greens in 3 Steps

What's going on everyone? Welcome back. Look, do you ever have a bunch of leafy greens that you need to get out of the garden and you put them in the fridge, they become a little soggy, a little stale, a little moldy, a little just not tasty? Well, it's happened to me and it's a shame because we put a lot of effort into growing this stuff and we want to make sure that we store it correctly. So today's video is going to be all about how to store your greens to make sure that they last the absolute longest as possible. And to do that, we're going to harvest some culantro which I've got growing right there. Let's go ahead and get to it. When you're taking a leafy green out of the ground, unless you're doing a cut and come again technique, which I have a video on on the channel, what you're going to want to do is try to get the root mass out. And so if you've ever seen living lettuce at the store, you'll know that it lasts a lot longer if you can preserve it and store it with the roots or at least some of the roots still attached. And so that's what I'm doing here, digging down. We've got a little bit of the culantro root ball. Culantro, by the way, very interesting, interesting green. I don't see a lot of people growing. And so I'm just going to try to shake off some of the dirt cause we want some of that to just go back in for whatever I'm going to put into this section of the bed next. We can be a little rough here, it's fine. The thing with this though is because the roots are on, it is still going to be a living plant and we can store it in the fridge with a little bit of maybe a moist paper towel, put it in the right area of the fridge with the right bag, which we're going to get into. And we will go ahead and move on to that next step. But there we go. We've got the roots pretty much free. What I like to do next is come in with a sharp knife or some scissors and cut off any of the damaged plant leaves that you're not going to eat. So these are going to decay quicker cause they're already damaged. So we're just going to take these off, not worry about them. And notice that I washed the root ball just to get a lot of the bigger clumps of dirt off, but I did not wash the leaves. And there's a very specific reason for that. I'm not washing the leaves because you know, back when I used to grow commercial microgreens, if you're washing those, if you're washing those commercial microgreens and you deliver that to a chef, the shelf life of those microgreens is going to go down by something like 25 to 40%. It really does depend on a particular microgreen and how well you store them. But washing before you use is a great idea. Washing before you store, usually not the best idea for shelf life. So we've got our culantro trimmed up. All these leaves look good. We'll end up using these in the kitchen. So now it's time to store it. First thing I'll do when it comes to storing is take a damp paper towel. This is one that I've just folded up and wet and I'll wrap it around the root zone. And I might need to make this one just a slight bit wider. And this is to provide a little bit of water to that root zone. Yeah, it's not going to be ideal. There's not a lot of obviously nutrition in this or anything like that, but we don't care about that so much. We just want the root ball to have a little bit of something to drink on. So it's not trying to suck a lot of that moisture out of the leaves. Next step is you're going to want to get some kind of produce bag. Now I like, and I love in fact, these are Peak Fresh USA bags. So you can get them on Amazon. I think it's maybe $9 for a 12 pack, but they're all reusable. So it wouldn't really be worth it. But they're reusable. So it then becomes worth it. And so you've stored, you're storing it bottom down, going in the bag, making sure you get it nice and nice and properly stored in there. And then in a perfect world, what you'd be wanting to do is zip tie this closed. Now normally you would say, okay, that doesn't sound like a good idea because ethylene gas and all of the things that a fresh vegetable will put off that can actually age it quicker will be trapped inside. Well with these Peak Fresh bags or any bag similar, it has a porous structure to it. So the bags can breathe, which means then you actually do want to cover the produce completely and not have anything open. So what I'll do with one like this, which is longer than the bag is I will double bag it. And then down here I'll take the zip tie and close it. And so is it a perfectly tight closed seal? No, it's going to do good enough though. And then I'm just going to store it in my refrigerator in the veggie section. And in it goes into our crisper bin with the vegetable setting. And this is going to last for quite a while, at least a week, if not more. Well, there it is. How to store your leafy greens for maximum freshness in about five minutes or so. So just to reiterate, number one, if you can try to remove the roots as well as the tops of your plants. It's going to make it last a lot longer no matter how you store it because the plant is technically still completely alive. You haven't severed it off from a main resource for water for the plant. It's going to keep it a lot fresher. Number two, remove any of the dead or damaged tissue and do not wash the leaves if you can get away with it before you store. Of course, wash the leaves before you consume, but don't wash them before you store it because any latent moisture, even if you go through a pretty rigorous drying process, is going to reduce the shelf life of those greens. And then our third tip is going to be put it in an actual produce bag, a bag that's designed for leafy greens or vegetables and fruit storage because it's going to have a breathable sort of plastic mesh. It will allow some of that ethylene and other, other gases that artificially speed up the process. Not artificially, but they just speed up the process of a decomposition or ripening. It's going to let those breathe out and it's also going to let air exchange come in and then try to seal it up completely if you're using one of those bags and you're honestly going to extend the shelf life of your fresh produce by two, twice. It's going to be twice as fresh for twice as long. It's going to be absolutely delicious, absolutely tasty. And that's what we want. Like when we're growing stuff like this, the last thing you want to do is put all your effort into growing a beautiful harvest, delicious harvest, something healthy for your family and your friends. And then, oops, I didn't store it correctly. And it's a little soggy, a little slimy and a little gross to be honest with you. I've done it before myself and that's why I did the video. Hopefully these tips are going to help you quite a bit. Works really well for microgreens too if you're into the microgreens game. So until next time guys, thanks so much for watching. Let me know what you want to see in the comments down below. Hit like, subscribe, hit the little notification bell if that's your thing, and I'll see you in the next video. Peace out.