[Sca-cooks] Root Vegetable Storage
Moramarsh at aol.com
Moramarsh at aol.com
Tue May 5 15:38:14 PDT 2009
When I was a teen, the parents decided to expand the kitchen. Before they
dug the framing in they notified the kids they needed "help" digging the
cellar. They didn't tell us before hand what was involved.
We used a pick- lots of rocks and shale -and shovels and it took us all
summer to dig out a space
10 x 15 feet x 10 feet deep. They actually dug in the stairs down into
the dirt and then covered it all with a trussed frame and built the kitchen
on top of that.
At first they thought that would be fine.
Until the rains started and they had their own mud hole with 3 feet of
water.
When it was pumped and dried out , the parents concreted the walls and
the steps.
They wanted the base as natural as possible as they were storing
vegetables, canned glass jars and extra paper supplies for the house. ( This was
also the emergency tornado shelter - Oklahoma)
The walls held but the stairs broke. But everything got bugs in it. They
burrowed up through the floor!
Last resort was another layer of concrete ( with mold resistant
ingredients) on the walls, floors, and the stairs were reinforced with metal and
repoured with stronger concrete.
Next year all the crops were safely in their sand beds and the jars were on
the shelves and the paper goods stayed dry. This has how it has been
for over 40 years now. It is well used.
The only thing they added was a sump pump for the occasional condensation
that naturally occurs.
Going down there to pick out vegetables and canned goods, when we visit,
reminds me of years ago as it has not lost the cellar smell.
If it is good for wine why can't it be good for vegs?
Mora
In a message dated 5/5/2009 2:30:17 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
katiracook at hotmail.com writes:
I have been doing research on 'winter gardening' for my community garden
and one of the ways to have fresh veggies during the winter is a take on the
old root cellar. Grow your root crops to maturity, leave in the ground
and if necessary, mulch well to protect from frosts. Just dig up what you
need when you need it. I am going to try it with carrots and perhaps
parsnips. The only dark/dry/cool place I have in my condo is the under-stair
closet and that is where I store my WINE!
Katira
> From: susanne.mayer5 at chello.at
> To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 22:29:41 +0200
> Subject: [Sca-cooks] Root Vegetable Storage
>
> Hello all,
>
> my Grandmother used to store potatoes, carrots and other root vegetable
it
> the cellar in a sand patch (about 1x 2 meter and about 1/2 a meter of
lose
> sand / dry earth mix) from the harvest time in autum during winter.
> So if you can store the bucket (I would take a small wash tub, the
bigger
> the better) in a dark, dry and cool place it should be OK. I would not
sorti
> somewhere warm.
> Can't remeber if we had bugs in the veggies (35years ago is a long
time,..)
> but I know the carrots and potatoes did work and were kept for quite
some
> time.
>
> Katharina
> Drachenwald
> Austria Ad Flumen Caerulum
>
>
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