Root Cellar Ideas For Harvesting Vegetables

In this excerpt from the book Root Cellaring (1991), learn about some of the best root cellar ideas and tips to get the most out of storing your vegetables and fruits.

article image
by AdobeStock/ekatherina

In this excerpt from the book Root Cellaring (1991), learn about some of the best root cellar ideas and tips to get the most out of storing your vegetables and fruits.

Root cellaring is an energy-saving way to store vegetables and fruits using the earth’s naturally cool, stable temperatures. In Root Cellaring (Storey Publishing, 1991), Mike and Nancy Bubel go beyond the traditional underground root cellar and discuss the whole range of ingenious techniques — from garden trenches to root boxes — to put by as much garden produce as you can without processing. In this excerpt from Chapter 4 of their book, they explain how to maximize your crops’ lives in the root cellar by timing the harvest just right and employing the best techniques for the post-harvest handling of vegetables and fruits.

When heavy frost sparkles and crunches in the grass each morning, we know it’s time to begin to think about bringing in the root vegetables. The soft fruits–tomatoes, peppers, and such–have already been picked when the first light frosts struck, and stored away for short-term keeping. Hard-shelled fruits like squash and pumpkins were left in the field to cure after they matured and are now sprawled on the porch, waiting to come in where it’s warmer. The roots, bless them, wait patiently underground–and even continue to grow during the weeks of fine weather that often follow the first frost.

It’s a good thing that the fall harvest can be done in stages, for when at last it is time to bring in the roots, there’s a lot to be done–digging, trimming, rounding up containers, gathering sawdust, sand, and leaves, lugging baskets inside, and packing the vegetables away. If you grow a lot of root vegetables as we do, you can count on spending several weekends getting them out of the ground and into the root cellar.

Timing of the harvest

  • Updated on Jul 23, 2023
  • Originally Published on May 30, 2013
Tagged with: fall harvest, root cellar
Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368