Fresh Storage of Produce

Reader Contribution by Anneli Carter-Sundqvist
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If I would ever build another place to live, the first thing I’d consider is the root cellar, or the equivalent, that would naturally keep cold enough for me to store food in. I can’t emphasize it enough; the ability to store food without a freezer, refrigerator, fuel-consuming processing or artificially cold rooms (cold-bot controlled) is for me the key to self-sufficiency. Fermentation is one way to give food a longer storing capacity, but many crops will keep fresh all the way until next summer if kept in the right way. For the past few years, we’ve experimented with different ways of storing food fresh and now we’re eating garlic, onions, squash, carrots and beets in June. Usually we run out of our supply before it goes bad. By fall planting greens in cold frames for an late winter harvest and by planting short varieties of carrots early spring, we now overlap many crops from one year to the next.

Where ever it’s cold enough with the right moisture can be used to keep food. Most root crops want a temperature around mid to low 30’s, without freezing. If you’re cellar isn’t the right place, perhaps the garage could work, or the mudroom. A north facing bulk head will do, by opening and closing the door you can control the temperature.

The first thing to consider is to plant storage varieties of the crops you’d like to keep. Onions, for example, have both summer varieties with more water in them and storage varieties that are denser and more pungent. I try to prioritize the space in the garden too, less for summer squash that ripens when everything ripens, and more for winter squash that we can enjoy into late spring.

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