I’m sure we’d all love a 10×10 cellar with proper humidity levels, sturdy shelves and a light for convenience. Not all of us have the time/money/space for one. Don’t despair though, ancient man managed quite a bit of food storing, with just holes in the ground and caves. Proper root cellars will keep things longer most years, but you can still get quite a lot of storage time out of the simpler methods. (Granted, these will work better in colder locations, if you are a hot dry place, I’d encourage you to dehydrate instead of bury.)
Hole in the ground – Yup, that’s the level of simplicity I’m talking about. I’ve stored potatoes, parsnips and carrots all winter with this method. I hear it works with beets too. First, dig up the roots, and cut the tops off to about 1 inch. Gauge the size of your harvest. Dig your hole, and don’t be a pansy about it. You need to dig down at least 12 inches deep and as wide around as you need for a single layer of roots. If you make it too shallow your roots will freeze and spoil faster, and rodents will have an easier time finding the stash. Line the hole with straw for potatoes, or sand for carrots/parsnips. Make sure your hole isn’t in a flood prone area. Place in roots, and cover, making sure that they have 6-8 inches of soil above them. Mark if you want, with something low key like a rock or stake. The roots will stay nice and crisp and cool for the fall/winter. For those of us with really cold winters, there comes a point when the ground freezes and harvesting from the Hole goes on hiatus. Those roots will still be good if you dig them up as soon as the ground can be worked in the spring. Unless some tunneling rodent finds them first.
Bury a trashcan – Using a buried trashcan will avoid a lot of the moisture issues that can plague Hole-in-the-ground stashes. A metal can will rust eventually if you bury it somewhere moist. Metal will slow down burrowing rodents though. If you bury it so the top is near the ground level, you can arrange to still harvest even after the soil has frozen. Use a stick to help get soil down around the sides of the trashcan, you want good contact between the soil and the can to aid in insulating. Hopefully this goes without saying, but use a clean trashcan.
Vegetable Clamp – If moisture or soil composition keeps you from digging buried cashes, a clamp might work for you. Using a patch of bare earth, put down a thick layer of straw. Mound your roots on top of the straw, in a pyramid shape. Put a thick layer of straw over all of that. Shovel dirt over the entire mound, leaving some straw uncovered at the top for ventilation. 6 inches is the minimum for the earth covering, 10-12 inches will get you further in zone 4 winters. Clamps are more noticeable, scavengers of the 4 legged and 2 legged variety will have an easier time spotting clamps than they would something like the buried trashcan.
With all of these, bags of leaves and grass clippings can make good insulation, as can snow. Be creative about using the free materials around you, and you’ll find you can store your root veggies cheaply over the winter, even without an ideal cellar.
– Calamity Jane
6 comments
Old plastic coolers also would probably work for this as well. Also, if an old facility, that old septic tank (now defunct of course) might be able to be refurbished into a underground vault ?
Another thing you can do if you are in a local where it freezes is after you bury your veggies, put hay or straw bales over the top of them. This will keep the ground from freezing hard for quite awhile. We use to just leave our route veggies in the garden and cover the rows with hay. You could go out for most of the winter and pull back the hay and dig up a few. This worked especially well if it snowed on top of the hay and added extra insulation.
I took an old chest type freezer, sanded, primed, and painted it with roof paint, then glued 2″ Styrofoam to the sides and top. I then buried it to a point about 12″ below grade, then covered the top with straw. I covered the hole with a piece of plywood just to keep people and pets from stepping into the hole.
I have kept root vegetables up till the then end of April in this freezer type root cellar.
In the 40’s and 50’s my parents would buy and store root vegetables (and a few other thing) on the dirt floor in the cellar. Most of the cellar had a concrete floor but about 100 sq/ft was a sandy soil. The potatoes would be layed down in the burlap bag we bought them in. Rutabagas and beets right on the dirt. Winter squashes on the dirt. Onions in a old bushel basket. We would also store apples and they kept until early spring but sometimes got a little bit wrinkled. The cellar was probably about 40 degrees more or less in the winter.
Good call on burying the trash can. Think I’m going to try that one.
Do you think the “dig a hole” method would work well if you can dig to a point below the freezing level of the soil? I know if might be a couple feet of digging…hmmm…which I suppose at that point you might as well man up and just dig it a bit deeper for a trash can. Really cool article, CJ! Can’t wait for spring now!