At the Root of It - Saltscapes

As interest in home vegetable and fruit growing enjoys a rightly deserved renaissance – and one that may well become more and more important as the price of fuel changes much about how we live – more people are trying to figure out just how to keep the produce that our gardens yield through summer and fall.

Cold cellars keep veggies fresh through the winter.

There are the tried-and-true options of canning, preserving and freezing, for those who have the time and wherewithal to do so. But we can also keep the harvest by carefully storing vegetables through the fall, winter and early spring using cold storage rooms, root cellars, and even root barrels. With a little planning and preparation, you can keep squash, carrots, onions, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, garlic and apples for months and still have them look and taste like reasonably fresh foods.

In some ways, root cellars and cold-storage rooms are a nod to earlier days, before refrigeration and year-round availability of all sorts of foods became quotidian. Ask around the neighbourhood, particularly if you live in a rural community, and you’ll find that many homes still have some sort of storage area for keeping produce through the winter.

Alex DiNicola and his family live near Brooklyn, in Nova Scotia’s Hants County, where they grow vegetables organically for the city farm market trade. Alex is a great proponent of using root cellars and cold-storage rooms, especially as he watches the price of oil and related energies spiral up and up. "Root cellars don’t need energy if you design them properly," he says. "There’s energy required to build them, but you get that back by having fresh produce, kept for months, without the need for refrigeration."

What you use for storing your winter produce depends in part on what you like to eat, and how much harvest you have to put by. Alex suggests that neighbours could get together and build community root cellars, a sort of community larder. "Not everyone needs a huge space to store their winter vegetables," he says, "so it makes sense to make one cellar work for a number of families."

While some may wish to build, often you can make do with an existing structure and a few modifications. Martin and Donna Gursky have been living on a rural property in New Germany, NS, since the mid-’70s when the back-to-the-land movement first put out roots. They "live modestly," in Martin’s words, heating the home they built themselves with firewood from their own lot, and producing much of what they eat. The root cellar they built came about because there was a rock wall foundation from a barn that had once stood on their property, and Martin saw the possibilities in creating a root cellar using that wall as a starting point. Well insulated with seaweed, woodchips and other found materials, the cellar has worked perfectly for more than 30 years.

"Even on the coldest days of winter, the temperature has never gone below freezing," he says. The insulation keeps the humidity high in the cellar, making it ideal for storing root crops. "To store roots successfully, you have to create a place that is similar to where they grew," he says. "They like it cool, dark and moist."

Kay and Edwin Wall of New Annan, PEI, have lived in their home for 45 years, and have always had a big vegetable garden. "We grow enough potatoes to keep us all year long," Kay says, "and my husband’s brother grows turnips which he stores at our place and shares with us." The Walls have had success for the most part with storing their winter vegetables, although their first cold room wasn’t satisfactory for the task. This room in the basement had a concrete floor, and Kay feels that there wasn’t enough humidity to keep her vegetables properly. "What we decided to do was use the cellar under my husband’s workshop," she says. "It’s got a four-foot concrete foundation and a clay floor. We store our potatoes and other vegetables in wooden bins and this has worked well for us for the past decade." The original cold room has become an ideal place to store preserves. When chill winds blast through New Annan, Kay isn’t worried; the workshop where her husband works on lobster traps throughout the winter has a woodstove, and this casts enough heat to keep the vegetables under the floor from getting too cold.

The right humidity/temperature combination is part of the secret to effective vegetable storage. If it’s too dry, produce will dry out. Too moist, and mildew or rot may set in. Brian Ives and Elizabeth Ormond live close to Black Avon, which is near Antigonish, NS. Their basement root cellar is 8 feet by 12 feet, with cement walls and an earthen floor, and more than six inches of insulation. Brian says the temperature remains consistent (usually around 4°C), with no sweating due to excess humidity or temperature fluctuations.

There are other options. Depending on your soil and climate, you may be able to leave some root crops, including turnips, parsnips and carrots, in the soil for part of the winter and dig them when you want them. Mulch these crops heavily (piling the material at least 12 inches high) after the soil begins to freeze, using dry leaves, straw or hay. The mulch keeps the soil from freezing too hard, and also prevents temperature fluctuations that can lead to rotting vegetables. This method works best, however, if you don’t have clay soil – and don’t have four feet of snow on top of your mulch. In many parts of the region, wireworms that chew root vegetables are also a problem.

If your soil is not too heavy, slow-draining or stony, dig a hole and sink a metal trash or other type of container up to its top. Use a new container and not one that contained petroleum or other chemical products, and drill a few holes in the bottom for drainage. Layer vegetables, separated by straw or shredded newspapers, and cover with one to two feet of insulation such as hay or straw.

Tips on selecting and harvesting your storage crop

Alex DiNicola says it’s important to harvest your vegetables at the optimum time to get the best benefits of nutrients, flavour and storability. But planning for storage actually begins long before the harvest, when choosing seeds of vegetable or fruit varieties that will store well. Not every type of carrot, potato, onion, apple and other fruit or vegetable keeps equally well for long periods of time: some have been specially bred to store well, although occasionally there’s a sacrifice to flavour or texture with long-storing varieties. Later-maturing varieties also tend to keep better than those that are ready early in the season – think about "August apples" and how they’re delicious in late summer, but not something you keep over winter without preserving them. Check with seed catalogues, which will often list that a particular variety is a "good keeper," and also consult with other gardeners who have been keeping a root cellar or cold room stocked with their own produce.

For long-term storage, foods should be harvested when just ripe, not over- or under-mature. Anything that is bruised or blemished should be used up first or else processed (canned or frozen) rather than put into cold storage. Alex says that the old motto about one bad apple spoiling the barrel is very true, so examine your produce carefully before you put it into storage, and remember also to check it regularly to make sure that nothing is deteriorating.