Storing and freezing what you picked

The gap between picking and eating is where most of a picking day gets wasted, and in a New Zealand summer that gap is short. Fruit picked at eleven and left in a hot car until three is jam whether you wanted jam or not.

Getting it home

Take a chilly bin or cool bag and put it in the boot before you leave the house, not as an afterthought. Berries in a car on a thirty degree day cook.

Do not stack. Berries at the bottom of a deep container are crushed by the time you get home, and one crushed berry starts the rot in everything touching it. Shallow and wide beats deep and tall.

The rule that matters most: do not wash it yet

Berries and cherries absorb water, and washed fruit spoils far faster than unwashed fruit. Wash it in the few minutes before you eat it, never when you get home.

The same goes for stone fruit and grapes. Apples and citrus are more forgiving but still keep better dry.

How long things keep

• Strawberries: two to three days refrigerated, unwashed, in a single layer with the lid loose. They are the most perishable thing you can pick.
• Raspberries and blackberries: one to two days. Genuinely eat or freeze these the same week.
• Blueberries: a week or more, and the toughest of the berries.
• Cherries: about a week refrigerated. Keep the stalks on, because a stemless cherry bruises and spoils quickly.
• Stone fruit: ripen on the bench, then refrigerate once soft.
• Apples: months, if kept cool, dark and unwashed. Remove any with broken skin first, because one really does spoil the box.
• Citrus: weeks at room temperature, longer refrigerated.

Freezing berries so they stay separate

Freezing a punnet of berries in one bag gives you a solid brick. The fix takes five minutes.

Spread the berries in a single layer on a tray, freeze them until hard, then tip them into a bag. They stay loose and you can pour out a handful at a time. This is called open freezing and it works for strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries alike.

Hull strawberries before freezing, since it is unpleasant work once they are frozen. Frozen berries collapse when thawed, so use them from frozen in cooking, smoothies and sauces rather than expecting to eat them fresh.

Cherries freeze well if you pit them first. Freezing them whole and pitting later is a job nobody enjoys twice.

When you have simply picked too much

It happens on every good picking day. The best uses in order of effort are: freeze it, cook it down into a sauce or compote and freeze that, or make jam.

A compote needs nothing but fruit, a little sugar and low heat, freezes indefinitely and takes twenty minutes. Jam is the traditional answer but is a bigger commitment than most people expect on a Sunday night.

Find your next farm on the map, or see what is in season now.

Updated 27 August 2026