$10 Root Cellar: And Other Low-Cost Methods of Growing, Storing, and Using Root Vegetables: Modern Simplicity, #3
By Anna Hess
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About this ebook
1/10 of an acre can feed you all year!
The easiest way to grow more of your own calories is to focus on roots like potatoes and carrots. With yields of up to 200 calories per square foot, you can break your reliance on the grocery store with just a few seeds or starts and a shovel. Most root crops are easy to store through the winter and require no special harvesting or processing equipment.
So why don't we all grow roots? To keep the tubers happy after harvest, these crops need a cool, damp storage spot like a root cellar. This book walks you through building a root cellar out of a junked fridge for $10, and also presents some slightly-higher-cost options for winter storage. Other highlights include tips for growing storage vegetables and feeding those roots to your family or your livestock.
Self-sufficiency begins with the potato!
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$10 Root Cellar - Anna Hess
$10 Root Cellar
And Other Low-Cost Methods of Growing, Storing, and Using Root Vegetables
Volume 3 in the Modern Simplicity series
by Anna Hess
Copyright © 2013 by Anna Hess
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Visit my blog at www.waldeneffect.org or read more about my books at www.wetknee.com.
Cover photo by Stephen Ausmus, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Contents
Introduction
Why roots?
How to store vegetables without canning, freezing, or drying
Introducing the refrigerator root cellar
Safety
Fridge root cellar
How to make a refrigerator root cellar
Planning the orientation
Digging the hole
Dismantling the fridge
Ventilating the fridge
Burying the fridge
Maintaining temperature
Next steps
Other storage options
History of root cellars
Very low-tech storage options
Spring houses
Root cellars
The whole shebang
Cave root cellar
Basement root cellar
Basement cut-off
Under-floor root cellar
Integrating roots into your homestead
Growing enough roots
How to grow storage vegetables
Filling the root cellar
Eating roots
Feeding roots to livestock
Beyond the potato
About the author
Other books you may enjoy
Introduction
Why roots?
The Potato Eaters, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1885, is currently located in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
You see, I really have wanted to make it so that people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor and—that they have thus honestly earned their food. I wanted it to give the idea of a wholly different way of life from ours—civilized people."
—Vincent Van Gogh, in an 1885 letter about his painting The Potato Eaters
The perceived link between peasants and potatoes was widespread during the nineteenth century and caused many upper-crust English people to eschew the lowly spud. Over time, the stigma associated with root crops seems to have vanished, which is lucky for us since potatoes, carrots, and other roots make such useful additions to the self-sufficient homesteader's garden and pantry.
Root vegetables are easy to grow and provide plenty of calories per square foot.
If you're interested in maximizing the number of calories you can grow in a small space, roots often win over grains, and roots have the additional benefit that they don't require threshing and winnowing. In addition, if stored properly, root vegetables will often last all winter, providing vitamins that quickly disappear from frozen, canned, and dried foods.
On a more personal note, my husband and I found that once we started growing all of our own vegetables, carrot sticks became a winter staple since we yearned for the crunch of something fresh in January, February, and March. If your homesteading experience is anything like ours, you'll quickly find at least one (or more likely several) roots that make your life easier, tastier, and cheaper. Each year, you'll harvest more and more roots, and will soon will be faced with the conundrum of where to store your every-growing bounty over the winter. The purpose of this book is to make the storage of your root crops so simple and cheap that even Van Gogh's Potato Eaters could afford to follow suit.
How to store vegetables without canning, freezing, or drying
Types of storage vegetables
Storage vegetables (including roots, winter squash, and some others) are crops that will last for several months without canning, freezing, or drying. The table above breaks up common storage vegetables into two categories: warm, dry storers, and cool, moist storers. This is obviously a generalization since carrots like it wetter than cabbages and pumpkins like it warmer than onions, but most homesteaders will be doing well to simply find one cool, damp spot and one warm, dry spot for their storage crops.
Warm, dry storers can be maintained over the winter in a slightly cool part of your house that doesn't freeze but also isn't excessively wet. We keep butternut squash and garlic on shelves right in the kitchen,