Cold Cellars

[MorelCabin]

Anyone here have a cold cellar that you use for vegetables? I am looking at using a crawlspace under my kitchen...but I am confused about how one would store all the different vegies that need slightly different temps and humidity levels...are different areas of them different temps naturally? Just wondering...

 

[heatherv]

I'm interested in hearing any advice in tihs area also! We've talked about making a lift hatch type door in the floor of our pantry. But really I have no idea on how food should be kept in a cold cellar?

 

[the simple life]

I am doing the root cellar for the first time this year, I have a basement with a dirt floor and stone walls, it has the right amounts of humidity and all that so we are going to use it as the root cellar this year.
There is an excellent book called
Root Cellaring Natral cold storage of fruits & vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel
It explains everything you need to know about root cellaring and has pictures of peoples actual root cellars.
There are other ways of doing root cellaring aside from in your basement.
Some people dig out a root cellar from a hill on their property, or dig a hole in the ground with a trap door, you can bury a barrel in the ground, build one under the porch, in a smoke house,etc.
People have buried old referigerators in the grouond and used them.
You can build a vegetable clamp out in the yard as well if you don't have a place for a root cellar.
Its when you place your vegetables in a pyramid and cover it with straw. There is a little more to it, but its a way of storing vegetables that doesn't involve any building.
The book has sections on what stores well, what to plant and when and then how to store it.
For example:
If you want to store carrots it explains that you should lay them in a crate with sand. Do a single layer of carrots and then a layer of sand and keep going like that until the box is full. You can also use leaves or moss to do that.
They explain how to store every vegetable, in detail.
It is a very detailed book and if there is a will there is a way. These people figure out a way to do everything.
It also has recipes in this book.
I had been online and there was a thread about this on the other forum, but really not enough information on it that I felt comfortable doing this until I read this book.
I realized that my basement is literally perfect for a root cellar, so now I am planting crops specifically to put up that way.

 

[FarmerChick]

wow this is sure an old timey good way to store foods and it is almost lost now.

not many do this...especially in neighborhoods and such.

Tony's grandpa had a root cellar building he dug into a side of a creek where the water was cool from the springs and such. Really interesting to see that old building but sadly it disingrated a while back. Old time art form in a way, preserving foods cause back then you HAD too...no other way to ensure some good eats for long periods of time. I love old timey ways!!

Your thread just made me smile thinking about all this....he hung meats and such in an old smoke house also. cool

 

[MorelCabin]

Well I am giving it a try this year...I think I have the perfect cellar already built in the the basement of my house (I have a 1/2 basement and under the kitchen is a kind of crawspace that is about 5 ft high accessable through a trap door in the upper level bedroom) I really want to get to know how to do this so that nest year I can grow ALOT of potatoes and carrots and other things to store. It will also be my preserve storage. I have the book, the thing is the humidity levels have to be slightly diofferent for each vegetable...I think maybe you control this by packing in damp sand for some that need alot of humidity and hanging stuff that needs less....we will find out because I am going to give it a shot this fall...

 

[FarmerChick]

Since we truly can't watch great grandma and grandpa etc. do these things in real life and learn by real example, your experimenting is the best thing you can do. We read up on it, but truly I believe this to be trial and error. Imagine all the little "tricks" and knowledge that was lost in this type of storage.

You will learn. Best way to learn is hands on.!! Can't wait to hear how all goes for you. Sounds like you are off to a good start!

 

[sweetproserpina]

Oh, great topic. I moved into a house with a root cellar last winter (it's under the concrete front porch), but I'm not sure how to store everything properly in there. I'd love to give it a try this Fall!

Good luck everyone - if anyone has any more hints or tips, keep-em coming

 

[FarmerDenise]

I grew up with cellars for storage of stuff, coal and food.
My grandmother's cellar had one wall lined with shelves for the canned goods and grandpa and grandma stored most everything else in bushel baskets or wooden boxes. Potatoes just went in bushel baskets, nothing fancy done with them. Apples were wrapped in newspaper, if there was time and layered in boxes. Many of them stayed in the bushel baskets that we first put them in and we just went and picked out the bad ones, whenever we went down to get more apples. The apples were stored in a different corner of the cellar than the potatoes, because they give off a gas that makes potatoes sprout. A lot of stuff was simply layered with newspaper or sometimes hay. Sawdust and sand was just too much trouble to get a hold of.
By the end of winter the apples were wrinkly, but usually still good. Golden delicious apples were amazing good keepers. The potatoes would have sprouts and the carrots usually would start to grow. But it was still nice to have produce we picked the previous summer and we would look forward to picking the first dandelion greens and fresh mint in the spring.

 

[heatherv]

Wow! So glad all of you posted! And thanks for the book resource Natalie! I can't wait to hear how everyone's works for them! We'll all be learning as we go!

 

[miss_thenorth]

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