The Year-Round Harvest

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With a really well-planned root cellar, fresh tomatoes, tender dandelion shoots, nuts, pears and cantaloupes can all be preserves.

An Excavated Root Cellar

As we mentioned before, there are many options when it comes to root cellaring. But unless you're lucky enough to have an existing usable structure or live in a warm climate where a garden row is a good choice, you'll want to consider an excavated root cellar like this one.

Dug-in root cellars work well because they are insulated by the earth surrounding them. The soil is a poor conductor of heat, so the temperature of the ground six feet under is cool and fairly constant. The natural moisture of the earth helps keep humidity high. Since soil is heavy, an underground root cellar should be strongly built. In addition, because frozen wet soil can expand and rupture walls, it's important to provide drainage around the cellar to stop waterlogged soil from freezing and caving in the walls of your cellar. The root cellar shown here is divided into two parts for several reasons: The small anteroom helps insulate the inner chamber from extreme heat and cold and also provides a choice of conditions, allowing your vegetable storing system to be fine-tuned.

Let's assume that you're lucky enough to have a north-facing hill and you intend to make a dug-in root cellar in the slope of the hill. You're ready to begin, but how?

Step One: As you've surely guessed, your first step is to dig a hole in the hill. You'll need to remove enough soil to make space for the volume of the cellar you plan to build. It's no help to dig a hole much larger than you really need, for all that space will have to be backfilled. Dig deeply enough so that the footer will be below the depth of the average frost penetration in your area. Most of the cellar will be protected by soil. Dig down an extra two to three feet around the door where the foundation will be most exposed to the cold. Fill with gravel up to the base of the footer.

Step Two: Lay drain pipe from the floor drains in the cellar out to daylight. The floor inside the root cellar should be a bit higher than the level of soil outside the door so that water drains off.

Step Three: Pour the concrete footer. After the ground in the cellar site is leveled, make forms from 2 X 8 lumber. The footer should be 16" wide for a concrete block wall and 8" wide for a poured concrete wall 4" thick (in other words, twice as wide as the wall will be). Technically, of course, the footer will be only 7-1/4" deep, since that is the actual dimension of a piece of 8" lumber these days. Put several reinforcing rods in the concrete poured over the dug-out spot at the door. Let the footer cure for three to seven days before proceeding with the walls.

Step Four. Start laying concrete blocks.

Since you've sensibly planned the dimensions of your cellar in multiples of 8" (half the length of a standard concrete block allowing for mortar joints), you should have no trouble here. Leave a gap for a standard door. For vent pipes in side walls, either leave a gap between blocks or chip one block. Your cellar should be from 6-1/2' to 8' deep.

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