Putting Up Your Harvest For Winter
by Maggie
Posted on 03-12-2020 10:24 PM
How to Store Root Vegetables with No Root Cellar
Storing crops in a root cellar is a great way to preserve the harvest. But if you don't have one already, don't despair. It's fairly easy to make a space to store vegetables at the proper temperature and humidity. Whether you're storing food for your homesteading family or selling to customers throughout the fall, winter and early spring, storing vegetables in a root cellar can be a key strategy in small-scale farming.
A root cellar is a structure, usually underground or partially underground, used for storage of vegetables, fruits, nuts, or other foods. Its name reflects the traditional focus on root crops stored in an underground cellar, which is still often true. A wide variety of foods can potentially be stored—for weeks to months—depending on the crop and the conditions, but the structure may not always be underground.
Root cellar. Once used to store vegetables rustic old time log cabin and root cellar. Rough-hewn root cellar built into the hillside next to an authentic log cabin circa 1800s open door root cellar elliston newfoundland canada. Open door historic vintage root cellar dug underground near elliston, newfoundland, nl, canada root cellar. For food storage.
Technically, a root cellar is any storage location that uses natural cooling, insulating, and humidifying properties of the earth. Today’s root cellars are often found in basements, or are dug down in the ground or horizontally into a hillside. You don’t need an elaborate root cellar to store vegetables, even for months at a time. You can easily extend the fresh life of root crops using whatever storage space you currently have.
How to build a badass hidden root cellar / storm shelter. A root cellar is a great place to store your food and root vegetables. Easy and cheap to build.
Root vegetables are normally stored in the root cellar, which is partially or completely buried underground. Other things, such as fruits, greens, water, dairy products, bread, jams, and even fresh meat can be stored also but under varying conditions. Horseradish can last up to one year in a root cellar onions and potatoes from five to eight months.
Benefits of Storing Root Vegetables
The benefits for storing root vegetables is obvious–it is a way to preserve what we have worked so hard to grow in our gardens. If you don’t grow your own root veggies, you can still use these methods while you partake in your grocery store’s best sales on your family’s favorites. 
All you need to know are the correct temperatures and conditions to store each type of vegetable. Mind you, though–store bought vegetables probably won’t store as long as your own home-grown root veggies.
Which Root Vegetables Can Be Stored?
No. While sturdy root vegetables are great candidates for cellaring, many other vegetables and fruits from the fall bounty can be stored. Above: photograph via shenandoah valley flowers. Particularly good are biennial vegetables, from plants that flower and set seed during the following season, meaning they’re programmed for long storage. That includes members of the squash family, apples, beets, potatoes and onions. Other unsuspecting edibles like leeks, brussels sprouts, peppers, and citrus fruits can last in a cold room for periods of two to eight weeks, depending on the type of vegetable and the conditions.
Cold but drier, 32° to 40°f (0° to 4. 5°c), and 60 to 70% humidity. Apples , pears , cabbage , brussels sprouts , and potatoes can be stored in the same place as root vegetables as long as they are given extra air circulation to keep them drier. For the apples and pears: many gardeners advise wrapping each individual fruit in newspaper to help them keep longer and discourage any rot from spreading.
Before the advent of refrigeration, the root cellar would have been the place to find everything from potatoes to bacon. Preserved foods like cured meats and pickled vegetables were often stored in the root cellar to ensure that their temperatures stayed stable during storage, while potatoes, turnips, carrots, cabbage , apples, and so forth were put into the root cellar as is and carefully packed to prevent sprouting or rotting.
Root cellars are for keeping food supplies at steady temperatures and humidity. In the winter, they keep food from freezing, and in the summer, they keep food from spoiling. Vegetables stored in a root cellar are put there in the autumn for harvest during the winter and into spring.
Before you begin to build, you’ll need to figure out what conditions each of your fruits and veggies need stored at. Take a look at that chart again… anything that is of similar temperature and humidity requirements can be stored together, so long as you don’t mix anything that produces an odor with anything else (such as by keeping the odor-producers near a vent or in a sealed container), and don’t mix ethylene producing foods with root vegetables. Ethylene gas can cause the potatoes to sprout and the roots to spoil. If storing in the same room, put the ethylene-producer on a top shelf near to a vent, and the tubers and roots at ground level. You may want to keep the roots or the ethylene-producer in a sealed container to block the passage of the gas; however be careful of mold growth inside the container if using this storage option.
A root cellar (american english) or earth cellar (british english) is a structure, usually underground or partially underground, used for storage of vegetables , fruits , nuts , or other foods. Its name reflects the traditional focus on root crops stored in an underground cellar , which is still often true. A wide variety of foods can be stored for weeks to months, depending on the crop and conditions. The structure may not always be underground.
How to Store Root Vegetables without a Root Cellar
Last summer, my husband dan hand-dug a root cellar seven feet straight down in the back corner of our city lot. Though hallmark instructs that the proper ten-year wedding anniversary present is jewelry, for us it was killer biceps and a place to store fresh apples through april. While dan read and researched, planned and calculated, delivering elaborate late-night monologs about rock walls and backfill, all i heard was: we’re going to have a place to store winter squash, potatoes, carrots and onions! each fall, for the past decade, we’d amass tremendous amounts of root vegetables and local fruit like a senile couple who forgot they don’t actually have anywhere to stash all these valuable goods.
These root cellars may look totally different but they share some common ground. They both have the ability to store your food all year round. So how do they work? well, one is the traditional root cellar that is built with cinder blocks. While the other is a less traditional form of a root cellar. It is a barrel filled with straw that can be placed underground and provide proper food storage for your vegetables.
You’ll get the freshest and most local produce of all if you grow your own and store it in a root cellar. Potatoes like these are prime for cellar storage. Updated 21feb2020: no matter how convenient it becomes to buy and eat prepared foods from the supermarket, this still leaves some of us wanting more. Are you attracted to the idea of stocking up on bulk quantities of wholesome produce at low harvest prices, then enjoying them for months of savings afterwards? are you concerned about food supply and security? have you ever dreamed of regularly buying organic heirloom fruits and vegetables from small farmers in the autumn, then using these special foods to enhance your gourmet cooking throughout the year? these are all reasons people are getting interested in root cellars again.
Root cellars in early america there are several references to root cellars in early records in british colonial america. A root cellar was a space used for storage, usually of roots as well as vegetables & fruits & drinks made from them overwinter, which could be located above ground, or partially submerged, or entirely submerged. Most root cellars were part of a building, but some were constructed as detached storage areas sheltered with roofs. These separate storage buildings were often called cellar houses. Sometimes spelled as celler, sellar, & seller in 17th & 18th century references, they were also called storerooms and storehouses.
Web exclusive: for information on root cellars and cellaring, see “fundamentals of root cellaring” here. Also, check out root cellaring: natural cold storage of fruits & vegetables, here. You toil in the garden all summer and fall, and may even devour much of your bounty fresh off the plant. What, however, can you do with large harvests of crops such as apples, winter squash and potatoes? you can do as our ancestors did and store them in a root cellar.
Which fruits and vegetables store, long-term, the best? which fruits and vegetables can you grow yourself and then store with the least effort or preparation and how are they stored? craftytothecore posted 7 years ago i've had good luck with butternut squash. I find it easy to grow and it seems to last a while after being freshly picked without refrigeration. Although i have heard it can be stored for up to a year in a cool root cellar.
Beets, Carrots, Turnips, and Parsnips
Root cellars have been used for thousands of years and were essential before the times of refrigeration. Root cellars use properties of the earth to keep many crops cool like carrots, potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, cabbages & other crops cool and fresh during the winter months. A root cellar may be buried under the ground, in a basement corner or even made with garbage bins. Temperature, humidity, ventilation are all important aspects of a proper root cellar to prevent spoilage:.
Certain crops lend themselves better to root cellar storage and winter eating than others. Such crops as potatoes, onions, shallots, beets, garlic, squash, carrots, cabbages, parsnips and turnips are at the top of the list. Among these crops, there are particular kinds that tend to store very well, so select varieties that are good for long-term storage if this is a route you’d like to explore.