[Anton]

Advice please. As every year, and in spite of spacing the sowing sessions out,  I now have tonnes of beans coming up at the same time. We now have to defrost the freezer so as to store the glut. However, my wife has decided that she would like to keep the soft fruit she froze and deposited their last year. So how long can her fruit stay safely outside the freezer until the defrosting is complete and the freezer is nice and clean to receive all the beans?

Anton

[Nobbie]

A couple of hours should be enough time to defrost the freezer. I put my fruit in multiple layers of plastic bags with some cool bag blocks in and then wrap the whole lot in a duvet. Keeps it well frozen even in hot weather.

Don’t think it’s much of a safety risk anyway, more a worry about it going mushy and re freezing in solid blocks.

[New shoot]

As well as running down the freezer pre a defrost I also make sure I have the fridge empty and then pile the freezer stuff in there.  It keeps it completely frozen for an hour or 2 while the freezer defrosts. 

Once the freezer is back together, I unplug the fridge and do a clean on that.

[Anton]

Thanks very much for this advice.

Anton

[Aunt Sally]

If you don’t have fridge space stack the food in a cool place (if you can find one) and cover them with your winter douvettes.

[Anton]

Thanks Aunt Sally.

Anton

[Harry998]

We use a plastic ice scraper on ours. Everything out on to the shed floor, scrape the ice, scoop it out into a bucket and everything back in within the hour 👍

[jaydig]

Not very useful for you at the moment, but I try to remember to defrost my freezer in the winter. I wait until we have a suitably cold day, then decant everything into strong bin-liners and put it outside in the shade while I get the job done.  Used to work best when we had snow, but unfortunately that doesn't happen often now in the Midlands.

[Anton]

Thanks Jaydig.

Anton