Enjoy Fresh Food in Winter

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Once you start root cellaring, you’ll find the advantages are as practical as they are satisfying.

They include:

• Well-grown produce raised on composted soil is more nutritious and safer to eat than the same produce raised on chemically fertilized soil and treated with pesticides and fungicides.

• The fresh, raw fruits and vegetables you bring to the table from your root cellar contribute valuable enzymes and fiber to winter meals. Cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables contain antitumor compounds. Squash actually increases in vitamin A content during storage. It seems safe to assume the same is true of pumpkin. Far from being mere side dishes, these and other vegetables are essential to your good health.

• The complex carbohydrates in carrots, beets and other root vegetables are valuable components in diabetic food plans and in many diet plans.

Because root cellar storage doesn’t depend on electricity or gas, it isn’t vulnerable to power outages like your freezer is. A root cellar also can save money on your gas or electric bill, if you substitute, say, cold storage of fall-ripening, long-keeping tomato varieties for some of the canning or freezing that you usually do. And the money you save on canning jar lids will buy a few packets of seed.

Having your own ready supply of some basic meal ingredients like potatoes, onions, beets, apples, garlic and such means you won’t need to drive to the grocery store so often; one of my least-favorite chores is running to the store for a single missing ingredient to make an evening meal.

In recent years, we’ve all heard advice on being prepared for a serious interruption in food supply or electric power, or for other emergencies. Having a system of home vegetable storage adds another margin of security to any supplies (water, vitamins, radio and batteries, dried foods, etc.) that you already might have assembled.

On a happier note, a root cellar can make it possible for you to enjoy some special food treats in the dead of winter — the little luxuries such as tender Belgian endive and crisp celery.

Natural cold storage dovetails beautifully with the best use of your garden space. Many storage crops can be grown as succession crops after early peas, lettuce, radishes, spinach and snap beans. This fall crop is the second half of the growing season, the half we miss out on if we don’t replant. When you have a cold place waiting for them, these fall-harvested vegetables can carry you well into a new-year bonus of productivity from the same patch of garden soil.

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