I gently pull the beets, carrots and turnips and spread them out to dry a bit in the Sun.Īfter 20 to 30 minutes, I turn them over to let their other sides dry. Again, I pick a nice, dry day to do the harvesting. Check the frost dates for your area here. You want to leave the crops in the ground as long as possible, but it’s important that they don’t get nipped with frost. I shave the sand off of the top of the pile as an extra assurance of dryness.Īfter my materials have been assembled and the frost is near, I’m ready to go. I generally put it on my August “to do” list and show up with several buckets and a shovel at a local sand pit after three or four days without rain. Next, you need to get some clean sand this has to be replaced every year and it should be very dry. I re-use the buckets from year to year, but I clean, bleach and dry them thoroughly between uses. These can be inexpensively purchased from the hardware store, or sometimes places like Dunkin Donuts will sell their used filling buckets quite cheaply. Once the root cellar is ready to go, how do we prepare the vegetables? I put my beets, carrots and turnips in 5 gallon buckets. I leave my parsnips in the ground until spring because the frost actually improves their flavor, and it’s wonderful to have a big crop to harvest in April. A truly thick blanket of hay can keep the frost at bay, but also be sure to put a tall mark where to dig, as the snow will hide anything short. Some farmers prefer to leave their root crops right in the ground for the winter. I just stack my buckets of beets and carrots on top of one another as well as the crates of potatoes. Shelves can be added for easy storage although they are not absolutely necessary. And, don’t forget that you will need a door to get into and out of your space. In a heated cellar, you will need to add insulation to these additional walls to keep the space cool. Standard construction using two by fours and plywood works fine. Typically, it’s best to build this in the northeast corner of your cellar, as it will stay the coolest throughout the year. It can be as big or as little as you desire. Build a room with the other two walls exactly parallel to the corner walls. If you have a heated cellar, this is exactly the place to begin. The corner of a solid, concrete foundation can provide the first two walls. If you have a cellar that’s not heated and doesn’t freeze, you already have a root cellar, though you may need to find a way to critter-proof a section. Not planning an addition anytime soon? No problem! Most people can create a root cellar out of their existing structures. Looking down through the trap door in the floor, we see a couple of crates of potatoes, a bucket of beets, a bucket of carrots & my Amaryllis (beginning to rest). To complete the root cellar, dense foam was sprayed into any cracks and crevices in the seams and corners to critter-proof the space. As the addition was completed, a trap door was placed in its floor. He then shoveled as much dirt as possible around the outside of the blocks to insulate the chamber from future frosts. Once the floor hardened, he built up the walls with standard concrete blocks to the height where the future room’s floor was going to be. He then poured a concrete slab on the bottom, leveled it and let it set up for a few days. Before a board was nailed or a sona tube poured, my husband dug down to the ledge (about 5 feet) and cleared out a space approximately 3 feet by 4 feet. My root cellar was created when we decided to put an addition onto our house. So, how do we create such a space? There are various ways to do just that. It’s better than a fridge-naturally cool, humidified, insulating, and spacious.
Last year, I ate my last beet from the former year’s garden the second week of July and it was still perfect. When I bring a carrot, beet, or potato into the kitchen from my root cellar, you’d think that I had just dug it up from the garden. We need to harvest our crops while we still can and tuck them into accessible spaces which don’t freeze. There isn’t likely to be much sustenance out there. They are utilized to store root vegetables such as beets, carrots, turnips, potatoes, as well as canned and pickled goods through the winter.Įven before the snow begins to fall, the ground outside freezes up like compact concrete in the fall and pretty much remains this way until spring. There are many types of root cellars, but they generally consist of a space dug into the ground that is cooled by the ambient temperature of the Earth.
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