Knowing What's in Store

A pair of serious root cellars in Elliston, Newfoundland. (Photo Neal Tucker)

Thank heaven there are still a few serious gardeners, the kind who grow root vegetables. Not just spring radishes, baby carrots and petite leeks, but long rows of big, bulbous beets and hefty rutabagas. These folks raise bushels of potatoes, wheelbarrow loads of cabbages, giant sacks of onions. They dig for buried treasure as cold weather sets in. They like having muddy fingers, and plenty of home-grown produce.

The rest ask, "What would I do with all that food?" For most people, extensive vegetable storage means having two crisper drawers in their fridge. Wonderful as it might be to feast on root crops all winter, keeping them is a challenge.

In the old days, a family had a root cellar under the house or shed, accessed by a staircase or ladder. Sometimes it was a cave-like room dug sideways into a steep hillside. (You can see some great examples of this type in Elliston, Newfoundland, which calls itself "The Root Cellar Capital of the World." Go to www.root cellars.com.) Whatever the style, cellars work because the temperature of the earth -- the place root crops would choose to be if they hadn't been so rudely harvested -- maintains a constant temperature in the upper 40s. This keeps vegetables unfrozen, yet cold enough to discourage sprouting in spring. Most cellars also have vents that let in cold air at night, to cool down the cellar in fall and keep it just above freezing -- the ideal storage temperature for most crops.

A root cellar is still a good idea. If you have one now, you know how satisfying it is to descend and select from your underground larder, neatly arranged in trays, buckets or boxes, on slatted shelves to keep the air circulating around them. Perhaps you store your carrots in damp sand to prevent them from shriveling. Or you keep the room's humidity above 90 percent, sprinkling water around as needed. An earth or gravel floor evaporates moisture best.

If you've a mind to join the fraternity of cellarers, Mike and Nancy Bubel's 1979 book, "Root Cellaring: The Simple No-Processing Way to Store Fruits and Vegetables," (available from online booksellers) will start you down the right path.

There are less ambitious techniques for those not ready to take that step. First of all, the relative mildness of the Washington winter allows you to use the garden itself as a storage facility. Brassicas such as cabbages, kale and kohlrabi may be harvestable for much of the winter. Roots such as carrots and parsnips will often remain fine for the digging. Even potatoes may keep if you heap them with straw or evergreen boughs.

Voles and other critters prey on winter roots. Even if that calamity is avoided, the worst of winter cold and spring warmth may eventually take their toll. To guard against these hazards, it is convenient to have some sort of protective mini-cellar. Plastic or metal garbage cans, sunk in the ground, do a fine job. Use one can per crop, or divide them lengthwise with a piece of plywood, so two crops can share the space. Insulate each lid with a disk of foam insulation, or stuff a leaf-filled plastic bag just beneath it. Straw bales piled on top will insulate the lids further. Burying a large fiberglass cooler, or an old fridge or freezer laid on its side would work too.

If you still love the idea of an underground room, turn part of your house cellar into one. Choose the coolest corner (on a north wall if possible, away from the furnace) and just seal it off with two insulated walls and a door. You'll need to vent it, to circulate cold air in and to release the ethylene gas the crops produce, because a buildup will hasten their deterioration. (Fruits such as apples give off especially high amounts of ethylene and can turn carrots bitter, so store fruits separately.)

The ideal arrangement is for your corner root cellar to have a window. Then you can ventilate the space by replacing a window pane with a piece of insulated plywood through which two six-inch pipes are fitted. One pipe is short and removes the warm air at the top. The other is angled down to within a foot of the floor. This draws air in from outside and keeps the cellar cool. Use a cap or a built-in valve to stop the flow of air if it is too cold or too warm outside. Keep the room dark.

Another option is to use a crawl space as a root cellar, as long as you have reasonable access. As with a garden-bed cellar, a garbage can will keep the mice and voles away.

To avoid rot, store only the nice vegetables with no blemishes, and store them unwashed. The only ones that won't like your root cellar are pumpkins, winter squash and sweet potatoes -- which prefer warmer, drier air -- and onions, garlic and dry beans, which like it dry but cool. Store these in the other part of the house cellar -- along with your wine -- or in a cool room, garage or unheated shed.

In our bounteous land we take our food supply for granted, but I'm always glad I have some of mine socked away for a snowy day. Security isn't knowing the credit limit on your platinum card has been extended. It's the thought of all those lovely potatoes and beets, just a few steps down.