Stock Your Root Cellar

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You don't have a root cellar? Improvise one. You need an area that is cool (but not freezing) with reasonable humidity. Now, whether or not you plant vast quantities of root cellar-able stuff (potatoes, apples, carrots, onions, cabbage, etc), you can BUY it in 1999. The root cellar doesn't care whether the stuff comes from a market or a garden.

For remarkably little money, you can keep a reasonable variety of stuff available to see you into spring, 2000. Will keep you from gagging on all those grains.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), September 04, 1999

Answers

Big Dog: can you provide a few of the varieties that "keep" better than others? Thks for the advice.

-- John A Halderman (jahalder@infinet.com), September 05, 1999.

BD:

Your suggestion is a good one. There is a problem. The things that you buy commercially have been washed to within an inch of their lives. They are much more susceptible to fungal invasion than the stuff you take out of your garden and store with the dirt still on. That's why commercial producers use all of these chemicals. It may work. There is little to lose.

Best wishe

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 05, 1999.


Z1X4Y7,

Will it work to put a 'dirt rub' back *on* to veggies for storage, or will they just sprout?" What about layering stuff in sand?

-- PH (ag3@interlog.com), September 05, 1999.


Don't limit yourself to supermarket produce. There are lots more prodce sources than the local Safeway.

It's county fair season. Find out if there's a Four-H produce market to go along with the fair. Go buy at your local farmer's market or better yet, directly off the farm itself. Take a drive in the country and look for roadside produce stands selling this year's harvest. Look for a "You-Pick-'Em" operation if you're looking for field-fresh items and the excercise of picking your own.

And don't forget your co-worker with a green thumb. Some of the best fresh vegetables we've gotten were "give-aways" from the wife's workplace.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), September 05, 1999.


WW beat me to it! Z -- you're right but, as WW points out, it is possible to get the real thing if you want it, almost anywhere in the country.

Storing veggies and the like is both simple (just do it) and sophisticated (each one takes a different temperature and approach).

As always, the recommendation is to buy "Root Cellaring" by Mike and Nancy Bubel. It is the bible.

In a sense, the main point to this thread is, "use your imagination" when it comes to your food and your storage. Even in a perfect root cellar with garden crops, some food spoils (give it to the chickens). Think of it as an 80-20 "get some benefit and variety" idea. And, next fall, you'll be better at it, whatever happens with Y2K.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), September 05, 1999.



BD:

I agree, but lately I find that even our organic producers are washing the devil out of things that I see at the farmers market. I grow my own, and, yes, some of it rots. But less. Folks, if you can find a good pick your own place you will be better off.

Best wishes,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 06, 1999.


BD:

I think that you will find that those people who use composted manure in soil prep. are beginning to worry about lawsuits arrising from bacterial contamination. It is now known that these are not just surface contamination but actually exist in the plant intercellular spaces. I think that finding plant products that have not been heavily washed will become very difficult....

Best wishe

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 06, 1999.


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