The Everything Guide to Living Off the Grid (17 page)

Choosing Crops for Fall Storage

Root crops, including potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, winter radishes, kohlrabi, and parsnips, adapt to root cellar storage. This group stores best at near-freezing temperatures with a high relative humidity.

Onions can also be stored near freezing, but need a low relative humidity to discourage neck rot. Leafy crops such as celery and cabbage may also be stored. Store them by themselves—they give off ethylene gas while in storage, which has proven to cause other vegetables to spoil quicker.

Pumpkins and winter squash store longest at 50°F to 60°F and a low relative humidity.

If you’re planning on storing apples, look for firm, long-lasting apples. These are usually thick-skinned, tart apples like Rome apples. Melrose, Fuji, and Granny Smith are other examples of winter apples that will last well into the early spring when stored properly.

Apples need to be stored at near freezing with high humidity, and should not be stored near potatoes because the ripening apples give off the same ethylene gas that celery and cabbage produce. This gas will also make your potatoes sprout prematurely.

When selecting vegetables for storage, discard any unsound produce. This includes immature, damaged, or diseased specimens. Keep a fairly close eye on your produce and remove any that has begun to spoil. You will find that the old axiom “one bad apple will spoil the bushel” is true.

Harvesting and Preparing for Storage

When you are planning to harvest for your root cellar, the later you harvest, the better. Your root crops will store best if they are kept in the ground until there is a danger of soil freezing.

Also, if your crops remain in the ground, they are easily accessible if you need them. And you don’t want to start storing them until the temperature in your root cellar is near freezing.

However, be sure to dig your root crops out of the earth before the soil freezes. Once harvested, remove any plant tops, clean roots by brushing off any excess dirt, and put them into storage.

Do not harvest winter squash and pumpkins until the vines are frost-killed and the skin is hard to the thumbnail. Leave stems on the fruit to protect against disease invasion. Parsnips will actually withstand freezing. Harvest some of your crop for use during the fall and winter, but leave a portion of the crop in the ground and dig in the spring. You will find the flavor will be greatly enhanced.

You can actually postpone your harvest by hilling soil over the shoulders of carrots and beets to protect them from freezing. If you want to delay the harvest even further, you can pile straw and soil over the row as insulation.

Onions can be harvested as soon as their tops fall over. Pull up the onions, remove the tops, and dry the onions in mesh bags or crates where they have good air circulation until the necks dry down. You can tell when they are ready to be stored—they rustle when you handle them.

Kale and collards can be left in the garden long after the first fall frost. Harvest as needed until the foliage finally succumbs to cold weather. Celery and late cabbage may be harvested after the frost has stopped their growth. Pull celery with its roots attached. Cut cabbage and remove the loose outer leaves.

When harvesting apples, pick and handle the fruit carefully to prevent unnecessary damage. Sort through the apples during harvest and discard bruised or cut ones. You will also want to discard apples that show insect or disease problems. Separate the apples by size. Use the largest apples first, as they don’t store as well as the smaller fruit.

Root Cellar Options

A root cellar is really nothing more than some sort of underground containment that maintains a certain temperature and humidity. The book
Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables
by Mike and Nancy Bubel has some expanded information about creating a root cellar to meet your needs.

A root cellar doesn’t have to be fancy; a container buried in the ground will work. You can even bury a garbage can and cover it with straw and a layer of plastic.

If you have the time, space, and means to build a root cellar, you need to decide on its size and location.

How big of a cellar should you build? A 5 × 8 root cellar will store 30 bushels of produce; an 8 × 8 cellar should hold plenty for the average family; and a 10 × 10 cellar should take care of everything you can produce. Shelves should be kept several inches away from the wall to increase ventilation and should be made of rot-resistant or pressure-treated wood to stand up to the humidity and weight load from your crops.

Many older homes will have areas in the basements that already have earthen floors, designed for vegetable storage in the basement. You may already have a root cellar built in! Be sure to check before you start making plans.

Three examples of common root cellars are those built into the ground, into a hill, or built into the basement of your home. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. If you build your root cellar into a hill, you can easily find the door even if there’s three feet of snow on the ground. There also will be less chance of food damage from flooding or melting snow. Your cellar can be graded so any water that should run in or seep in will run out the door. However, a cellar in the side of a hill can be much more difficult to excavate.

A cellar built into the ground is easier to excavate, cheaper to build, and can be done in most landscapes. Also, a shelter can be built above it to make it more accessible in inclement weather.

You may find that the advantage of having a root cellar as part of your home is the convenience. You don’t have to leave your house to obtain your produce.

However, before you construct a cellar, you have to be sure that you can maintain the humidity and the temperature needed in order to preserve your crops.

Ideal Root Cellar Conditions

You want the temperature of your root cellar to stay near freezing. Depending on where you live, that might not be a problem during winter months. But, a couple of sunny days might bring the temperature up as winter turns to spring. To avoid too much heat, borrow colder temperatures from the ground. Earth, even two feet down, has a remarkably stable temperature. The farther down you go, the more stable it is. You must go down a full ten feet before complete temperature stability is reached, and for the average builder, depth is limited because of the expense of excavating. You can also borrow cool temperatures from the air. Often the nighttime air temperature will be cooler than the air in your cellar, so open a vent to take advantage of the cooler air. You should also think about the location of your root cellar in regard to passive solar heat. Build your root cellar in a place that is shady throughout the day, on the north side of your property, and use insulation to keep out the heat.

Your second most important consideration is humidity. Even if kept cool, vegetables will soften and shrivel up in a low-humidity environment. Most vegetables require high humidities. A typical underground root cellar will generally maintain a high humidity all by itself if it has an earth or dirt floor.

Because the vegetables in your cellar give off gasses that often are conducive to either spoilage or sprouting, you need to plan for good air circulation. Have an inlet vent and an outlet vent.

Keep shelves a couple inches away from the walls of the cellar to encourage air movement. Use wooden bushel baskets to hold your produce; they were actually invented for this purpose and they allow air to circulate from top to bottom.

Spoilage

Once produce is harvested it begins to decay. That’s just part of the natural process. Certain microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, yeasts, molds, and protozoans cause the spoilage process. Microorganisms occur everywhere on the skin, in the air, in the soil, and on nearly all objects. It’s important for you to remember that some of the conditions that accelerate spoilage, such as inappropriate temperature and moisture control, also encourage the growth of microorganisms that cause foodborne illness. Consequently, spoiled food is not just an issue of quality; it is also often a question of food safety.

The most common cause of spoilage in a root cellar is improper ventilation. Root cellars must have ventilation! This is one of biggest mistakes people make when designing and installing them. Proper ventilation moves the ethylene gas that encourages spoilage away from the produce, increasing your storage time and the quality of the items in storage. It also slows down molds and mildews that thrive in dark, damp, still environments.

Although root cellars need to have some humidity, if temperatures start to rise, moisture coupled with heat will also cause plant deterioration and spoilage. Your root cellar needs to stay moist and at a temperature near freezing (32°F) for most of your root vegetables. If you get much of a temperature fluctuation in your cellar, humid air will condense on the ceiling, walls, and the food you stored as the air cools past its dew point. Excess water on produce can also encourage spoilage. Cover vegetables with burlap, towels, etc., to absorb condensation, and open the vents to get the air moving and remove the excess moisture.