When and how to collect sea buckthorn?

Industrious gardeners prepare for the harvest season in advance, trying to learn new ways to quickly conserve and protect the hands from severely prickly plant species. Little is known about how to assemble the sea buckthorn safely and without damaging the berries. The fruits of this tree-shaped shrub are a real concentrate of various vitamins and nutrients, but it is not so easy to prepare them for the winter.

Completely ripe berries acquire a bright orange color and become soft enough in late summer or early autumn. Experienced summer residents know when to collect sea buckthorn in a particular region, but, in most cases, the dates fall on the second half of August, September or early October. The branches of this plant are very tightly covered by berries, which are securely protected by sharp and strong needles. Before direct collection it is necessary to determine the purpose of the crop.

If the cooking of jam or sweet compotes is planned, seabuckthorn is harvested in August, or in the extreme case - in early September. These terms are worth observing, since berries have the greatest density at this time. About how to collect sea buckthorn for consumption in its raw form - it's up to the dacha owner himself, it all depends on the personal tastes of the plant's owner. But the highest content of such necessary for human ascorbic acid in berries falls on August-September. If the purpose of the harvest is the preparation of jam or various marmalades, sea buckthorn is harvested later, usually in September-October. Juices are harvested also at the end of September, after full ripening of the fruit. It is during this period that you can make wound healing and bactericidal sea buckthorn oil.

Solving the question of how to properly harvest sea buckthorn without the help of special tools, you need to take care of reliable protection of hands. The pedicel of the berry is very short, and the sharp spikes of the plant are quite long. If you mash the harvest, a lot of juice will be released, which can cause irritation on the skin of unprotected hands. Therefore, there are several simple rules for how to collect sea buckthorn quickly and painlessly:

1. Before you start, always wear an apron and dense gloves. In advance it is difficult to predict how the skin will react to fresh juice. It is almost impossible to wash the sea-buckthorn that has fallen on the clothes, so it's much easier to dress.
2. When berries are harvested from branches, they follow the direction from top to bottom.
3. There is a small trick in how to collect sea buckthorn very quickly. You need to put the entire branch in the freezer, and then just knock it on the table - the berries will fall off themselves, and the spikes will stay in place. But this method is suitable only if the fruit was originally intended to be stored in a refrigerator.

There is also a very long, but more accurate method of harvesting sea-buckthorn berries. For him, garden pincers are used, by means of which the fruits are cut off methodically one after another from the cut branches of the plant. The disadvantage of this method, in addition to the long collection time, is a serious damage to the whole tree-like bush. The best way is considered a manual option - berries do not choke, and the harvest of the next year will be more abundant due to the preservation of healthy branches and bark.