Sea buckthorn is a unique plant.. This is a useful food product and medicine that treats everything from skin burns to heart disease. To forget what is avitaminosis, a person only needs to eat 100 g of this berry per day.
But, despite all the value of sea buckthorn, few people decide on an independent collection of berries. All because this the process is very time consuming and time consuming. But this is only for those who do not know how to do it correctly.
From this article you will learn what are the rules for collecting sea buckthorn, and also what adaptations can simplify this hard work.
Table of contents
How to determine what can be harvested sea buckthorn: maturation in the Moscow region, the Urals and Siberia
After ripening, sea buckthorn berries become orange. At the same time they are so tightly impaled on the branches, which resemble the ears of corn.
This is what makes the harvesting process difficult. Therefore it is important to know in which period the berries break the easiest.
In order to correctly determine the timing of collection, you need to immediately decide what you will do with the berries.
If you plan to use fresh sea buckthorn, or to make compote or jam from it, it will be easier to remove the berry at the very beginning of ripening.
Despite the fact that the ripened sea buckthorn will stay on the branches for a very long time, over time it will become softer. To break such a berry without damaging the delicate skin is almost impossible.
The beginning of the ripening of the fruits of the plant (in central Russia and Moscow region, in the Urals and in Siberia) falls at the end of summer, the beginning of the autumn months.At this time, the berry has the highest concentration of vitamin C, and it is better to use it fresh.
If you are going to make sea buckthorn oil or juiceit’s best to wait a few weeks and start harvesting in mid-autumn. By this time, the berry will be well filled with juice, and you will receive much more product from a single tree.
As with all fruit plants, the time of ripening berries can not be strictly fixed. It all depends on weather conditions. If the spring thaw began early, then the sea buckthorn can keep up a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.
Polyethylene is spread under the trees and a trunk and large branches begin to tap with a stick. Frozen berries are showered on the ground, while remaining intact.
You can apply this method and without waiting for the winter period, just cut the berries together with small sprigs and place them at home in the freezer for a day. When the berries are frozen, you can easily separate them from the branches.
Cutting off the berry along with the branches, need to be extremely careful. It is very easy to damage a tree if you break off branches, and not carefully cut the shears.
Sea buckthorn is usually covered with berries. But, when applying this method too many branches can not be cutOtherwise, next year the plant may be left without a crop.
This is not the only way to facilitate the collection of sea buckthorn, they are quite a lot. The complexity of this process makes people be smart and invent unusual devices and tools to pick a berry.
Methods, tools, tools and devices that facilitate picking berries from a branch
There are the following methods of harvesting sea buckthorn:
- Hand picking berries. The simplest way, but very laborious and not always effective. The fact is that the soft skin is easily detached from the stem, the berry cracks and the juice flows directly into your hands.
- Cutting berries with forceps or nail scissors. This method will keep the berries intact, but it requires no less time than breaking hands.
- Cutting berries with branches. More about this already mentioned above. Not the most humane method in relation to the plant.
- Getting sea buckthorn juice straight from the tree. Enough original way, but if your goal is sea buckthorn juice, then it will greatly facilitate your work. Place the juice container under the branch of the tree and slowly move it along the hand from the base to the tip, while crushing the berries. Thus, in an hour of labor you can get up to 4 liters of sea buckthorn juice.
If you collect sea buckthorn in large quantities, then manual methods will not work for you. You will need tools and devices for picking berries:
- "Cobra". The most popular folk invention. To make it, you will need a small piece of wood, a handle will be made of it, and a thin wire of steel.We make a loop from a wire so that it resembles in its outlines the wick of a burning candle. With the help of sewing, we attach the loop to the wooden handle. From the side, this device will look like a snake. With it, you can easily and quickly get the berries, cutting off their stem. Adaptation will allow to reach the most inaccessible places of the tree.
- Scraper. For the manufacture of this device, we need a steel wire coated with an aluminum sheath, approximately 50 cm long. In the middle of the piece of wire, you need to make one curl, like a spring. To do this, you can make one turn of the wire around the neck of a glass bottle. The ends of the scraper must be leveled and bent to one side at a 90 degree angle. Such a device can press a twig and scrape the berries off it, pushing the scraper down.
- Slingshot with a string of fishing line. Hold the branch with one hand, and the second cut from her berries with this homemade device.
- "Tubule" - Another effective device to clean the tree from ripe berries. To make it yourself, take a can, and from the blank cut out of it twist the tube about 100 mm in length and about 4 mm in diameter to the sea-buckthorn berries. Wrap the resulting tube with tape, leaving a little space around the edges, and attach a plastic bag to the bottom. The method of application of this device is very simple - bring it to the top of the stem and press lightly. The cut berry smoothly rolls down the bag through the tube, without any damage.
But harvesting is only half the battle.. It will be a shame if your work is in vain, and the berries can not be saved. Therefore, consider the ways in which you can save the berry for a long time.
Easy way to collect sea buckthorn:
How to store
The most useful are berries, which have not been heat treated.It is with these methods of storage that we begin.
Cut branches of sea buckthorn can be saved until spring. To do this, hang them in a cool room, the temperature of which does not rise above 0 degrees.
It is important that there was dry, excessive moisture immediately provokes the processes of decay.
Frost. Washed berries need to be decomposed into plastic bags and put into the freezer. Thanks to fast freezing, the berry will retain maximum of its beneficial substances.
Sea buckthorn covered with sugar. The method also allows you to keep the fruit fresh until the spring. Take the sea buckthorn and lay it on a towel to dry. Then mix the berries with sugar and spread on sterilized jars.
The amount of sugar should be equal to the mass of berries. Store the workpiece can only be in the refrigerator. It is very convenient to use it for quick compote or fruit drink in winter.
Grated berry. For this method, well-ripened, juicy fruits are better suited. Take the sea buckthorn after harvesting, rinse well and let it dry for a while.Then mix with sugar in equal proportions and ceiling with a wooden pestle.
You can also use a meat grinder or blender. Spread the mixture in cans, close the capron lids and drain into the cellar, or put it in the fridge.
Sea buckthorn storage in water. Not the most famous method, however, is quite effective. Fill the fresh berries with boiled water and cool in the fridge.
Sea buckthorn juice - This is not only a storehouse of nutrients, but also a product with a low calorie content (52 kcal per 100 g). To prepare it is quite simple, for this, pass the sea buckthorn through a juicer and pour it over the cans.
Banks must be put on sterilization. Rolled juice placed in the refrigerator or basement. If desired, you can add sugar, honey, or other berries and fruits.
The heat, though, will destroy some of the nutritional components, but still natural homemade sweets for tea will be more beneficial than sweets and cookies from the store.
Nature has created many products for uswhich not only delight us with their taste, but also heal our body. Sea buckthorn can be safely attributed to such natural gifts.
Now you should not be frightened by the difficulty of gathering this berry, in the coming season you can safely go to the forest to stock up on a useful product, and, using effective methods of storage, prepare sea buckthorn for a whole year.