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  • From: Uriel <uriel@nasalam.org>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] root cellars
  • Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 06:50:28 -0500

Where I grew up in SW Washington the water table was too high for cellars. Instead, we had a room back in the wood shed that had walls about a food thick and filled with sawdust. Even the door was filled with sawdust. It worked quite well and kept various kinds of produce cool in the summer and protected in the winter. My mother would put down surplus summertime eggs in water glass (sodium silicate) to keep through the winter. Tomato plants would be pulled whole just before the first frost and hung upside down. The tomatoes would continue to ripen through the fall and early winter. Where I now live in the Ozarks the ground is solid rock in places so I'm experimenting with a different kind of 'root cellar' -- old refrigerators and freezers filled with straw to hold potatoes, carrots, etc. I'm curious to see how it works.

Uriel / SW Missouri


From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 4:08 PM
Subject: [Livingontheland] root cellars / Looking for advice on a few topics



"Root cellars are nature's way of storing fruits and vegetables. And they
can be excellent storage areas for other things as well. A hundred years
ago root cellars were one of the few ways they had of keeping things cool.
People not only put potatoes and carrots in their root cellars, but their
preserved meat, milk and cream, fruits and vegetables - literally anything
they needed to keep cool. Even though root cellars didn't get nearly as
cold as a refrigerator during summer months, root cellars generally were
and are 30 to 40 degrees F cooler than daytime summer temperatures."

complete article at http://waltonfeed.com/old/cellars.html

Root Cellar Basics complete page at
http://waltonfeed.com/old/cellar4.html
# Temperature is your most important interest
# Your second most important consideration is humidity
# Air circulation
# How big of a cellar should you build?
# Shelves
# What kind of root cellar is right for you?
# Construction methods
# Using your root cellar
# Vegetables and their optimum storage conditions


paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
--Henry David Thoreau
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 7/21/2006 at 2:04 PM Dianne Palmer-Quay wrote:

Finally, does anyone know anything about root cellar type storage in the
South? My crawl space is about 74 degrees now (outside highs are the
upper
90's) which is where I am storing the surplus potatoes and winter squash
>from this year's garden. But that temperature is too warm (according to
the books). Any ideas how I could create a cooler space without a
refrigeration device?






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