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  • From: Mark Teague <gooddogboy.mark@gmail.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Vermonters rediscover root cellars
  • Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:07:27 -0600

I am not sure if this is going to everyone, but will give it a shot.  Am I correct in hanging my garlic in the attic?  It is starting to sprout about now.  I havde a small room off of my basement, but I think it might be too damp to store root veggies.  Are there any affordable humidity thermometers out there as well?  Thanks

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

Vermonters rediscover root cellars
http://timesargus.com/article/20090208/FEATURES07/902080324/1016/FEATURES07
By GORDON DRITSCHILO
Staff Writer - Published: February 8, 2009

A closet in the back of Robin Chesnut-Tangerman's basement holds about 200
pounds of potatoes.

"That ought to see us well through," he says.

Wax-coated produce boxes sit atop a table in Carol Tashie's basement. One
is full of beets that have started to sprout tops again.

"I think that's great," she says. "It looks so neat."

While Chesnut-Tangerman lives at the end of a sparsely populated road in
Middletown Springs and Tashie lives near downtown Rutland, both are among
the many Vermonters who are finding ways to put root cellars in their homes
and eat produce from their gardens through the winter.

Maintaining the right mix of temperature and humidity allows a gardener to
preserve several types of vegetables until the next planting season. The
technique is anything but new, though Tashie says she came to it only about
three years ago.

"When we moved here, we made a really evolving effort to grow as much of
our own food as possible," she says. "Given that we live in a fairly small
urban plot, the root cellaring evolved out of necessity."

Others apparently share her interest.

Richard Czaplinski, who has used a root cellar for decades at his home in
East Montpelier in the hamlet of Adamant, says he is putting together a
publication on root cellaring and other food storage techniques for the
members of a local sustainability network.

One enterprising carpenter even believes he sees a market for veggie
storage space. Michael Goldstein of Addison County has put up fliers
advertising his services for making them. He plans to charge only for time
and parts, and expects he can build root cellars for $600 to $2,000,
depending on the size.

Tashie was lucky and didn't need to build anything to start storing her
crops; a section of her basement under an addition to her house was the
perfect temperature.

"I went on a Web site," she says. "I don't remember which one, but there's
lots of them. All I did was look up what temperature and humidity things
prefer."

Tashie's root cellar lies beyond a blue door in the back of her basement
but is hard to distinguish from the rest of the level. Without a furnace
— Tashie heats with a pellet stove — the room easily stays at the right
temperature.

"Your carrots, your beets, your parsnips need to be kept at about 32
degrees — 32 to 34 — but they need high, high humidity," she says.

To assure the vegetables are properly hydrated, many people bury them in
damp sand. Tashie opts for an approach she says is cheaper: sawdust from a
local mill.

Potatoes, onions and garlic she sorts according to size. Those don't need
humidity, so they get stored uncovered.

Squash prefers to be stored at between 50 and 60 degrees, so it sits in a
different part of the basement. Tashie says some people do "root attics"
for squash, as attics are frequently in the correct temperature range.

The vegetables keep as long as they stay at the right temperature,
according to Tashie. As winter ends and spring begins, the area begins to
warm up. If you've planned well, you run out of vegetables as the root
cellar stops being viable.

She holds up a parsnip. "These come out of the ground probably in October,
and they're great. They taste as good as they did when they came out of the
ground. They're not soft. They're not mushy."

Tashie learned the hard way not to plant too early. Now she figures out
when her root cellar is going to be 32 degrees and works backward to
determine when to plant. Ideally, vegetables move from the ground to the
cellar with no time in between.

"When it's February and you're taking your own produce out of a root
cellar, it's a really wonderful thing," she says.

Chesnut-Tangerman's house is solar-heated and built into the hillside. As
he poured the concrete walls for the basement about five years ago, he
says, he realized they would serve as a "cold reservoir." When he insulated
and paneled the walls, he left a corner bare and built an insulated closet.

"It's just a very simple thing with no controls on it," he says. "I grew up
on a farm in upstate New York. We had a large root cellar and always stored
garden crops over the winter. It seemed like a natural thing to do."

His cellar holds a selection very similar to Tashie's.

"The real advantage is the convenience," he says. "You don't have to go
outside to get food."

Chesnut-Tangerman's house is on a tour of solar homes, and he says visitors
usually show interest in the root cellar.

Tashie, a prominent advocate of eating locally, believes there has been a
spike in interest in gardening that will lead to more interest in root
cellaring. "Last growing season, everyone from the co-op to Noble Ace
(Hardware) was commenting on how seeds were flying out of the store."

Czaplinski says almost any house in Vermont could hold a root cellar.

"Most people have a basement already and it's probably got a concrete
floor. You can start by finding a cold place to store onions. … You try
stuff, see what works for you."

Contractors can build root cellars, with fans, thermostats and humidifiers
to control conditions, but Tashie says all that is not always necessary.

"Before you spend money building something, go down there with a
thermometer," she says. "You don't need a lot of infrastructure. You can do
this in a small house in downtown Rutland."

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