|
Post by ladymarmalade on Oct 30, 2017 5:17:07 GMT -5
Do you have one? DO you want one?
|
|
|
Post by paulf on Oct 30, 2017 8:59:01 GMT -5
Our home built in 1874 has a dirt floor half basement which was a root cellar but now has the furnace/central air, a second chest freezer and water heater. The roots are the seedlings grown during February to May. Also storage for seed starting materials and empty glass jars. We freeze what we harvest rather than can, so no need for a root cellar.
|
|
|
Post by meandtk on Oct 30, 2017 9:08:12 GMT -5
It is too humid, and our wTer table is too high to have one here.
|
|
|
Post by pepperhead212 on Oct 30, 2017 9:14:24 GMT -5
It would be nice to have one, but I don't grow too many things that would go into a root cellar. My basement has a heat radiator on one side, and more than half is my wood shop, one corner of it my heater, water heater, and freezer, and the other corner my pantry and hydroponics...plus some tools that won't fit in my shop! lol Not sure where a root cellar would go. I guess it would have to be in the ground, outside.
|
|
|
Post by ladymarmalade on Oct 30, 2017 10:02:34 GMT -5
I also do not grow too many things that one would tuck into a root cellar. I try to grow a few root crops, but nothing in quantity. In the past I've bought 50 pound bags of potatoes from local farms and lamented the lack of a root cellar when the buggers started sprouting before Christmas and we were eating everything potato for a month in an effort to use them up.
I sure do love the idea of a root cellar though!
|
|
|
Post by september on Oct 30, 2017 10:10:40 GMT -5
Would love to have one, I would change some of my gardening practices and try to grow more potatoes and root crops that I don't do much with at present. Our house is all above ground, built on a slab, but our first floor walls are all of cement block like a basement. No room available to remodel.
My parents house was on the top of a hill, and dad dug a root cellar into the side of the hill about 80 ft from the house, must have been the best natural slope there. I can't remember now if he added any insulation to the dirt walls, but the top of the hole was a sheet of plywood with insulation on top, and then covered with dirt. Access was through a "porthole"removable door in front. You had to step down into sort of a well in order to get in. It wouldn't have been convenient to go in and out very often, but they did store long term things like potatoes and apples.
|
|
|
Post by Laura_in_FL on Oct 30, 2017 10:30:00 GMT -5
It would be nice, but not feasible here. Basements and cellars of any kind become indoor pools...and not the fun kind.
On the plus side, I can overwinter carrots in the ground here. They will sort of sit from December to February, barely growing in the short cool days. Since the ground never freezes, I can pull them whenever I want.
|
|
|
Post by ladymarmalade on Oct 30, 2017 11:21:57 GMT -5
Would love to have one, I would change some of my gardening practices and try to grow more potatoes and root crops that I don't do much with at present. Our house is all above ground, built on a slab, but our first floor walls are all of cement block like a basement. No room available to remodel. My parents house was on the top of a hill, and dad dug a root cellar into the side of the hill about 80 ft from the house, must have been the best natural slope there. I can't remember now if he added any insulation to the dirt walls, but the top of the hole was a sheet of plywood with insulation on top, and then covered with dirt. Access was through a "porthole"removable door in front. You had to step down into sort of a well in order to get in. It wouldn't have been convenient to go in and out very often, but they did store long term things like potatoes and apples. You would definitely have to plan ahead with that kind of root cellar, wouldn't you? Often times one couldn't just run out and grab a handful of potatoes or something could they. Every couple of years Mother Earth News runs an article about building a root cellar like that. I always fantasize and think that it must be glorious to walk into a fully stocked root cellar, but the reality is probably that it's dark, cold, and full of spiders.
|
|
|
Post by paulf on Oct 30, 2017 12:03:26 GMT -5
My wife just told me about the root cellar that used to be on the property. The road coming toward the house was dirt and was dug out of the side of the hill we live on. In the 1940's and 50's there was a root cellar dug into the side of a hill on the property. In the 60's the dirt road was graded down for easier entrance to the property and the root cellar hill was graded flat. Our property has been in the family for eighty years and the cellar has been gone for fifty.
|
|
|
Post by september on Dec 26, 2017 17:20:42 GMT -5
I was just going through old photo albums looking for something else, and happened upon a picture of my dad and a couple of his grandkids down in his root cellar. It's from sometime in the mid-1970's - no date. On the back of the photograph he had written: "Here is my root cellar, it contains a crock of sauerkraut, a 100 lb burlap bag of potatoes, 1/2 bushel of apples, some leeks, parsley, and black horseradish. Temperature right now is about 42F, but it's possible that when the outside temperature falls to -10 or -20F, then it might fall to 28F which could freeze the potatoes. Will see how well it works -it was mamma's idea!"
|
|
|
Post by coppice on Dec 26, 2017 17:43:06 GMT -5
I don't have one now, but if I ever can afford to rebuild, a submerged greenhouse and root cellar will be on order.
|
|
|
Post by Gianna on Dec 26, 2017 21:51:20 GMT -5
I would love to have a root cellar, but one that kept a constant temperature of 50-55*F. It would be more of a cheese cave/wine cellar. But having something like that would be impossible on this property.
Instead of a natural in-ground root cellar/wine cave, I keep an older refrigerator set at 53 or so degrees. I use an external thermostat to keep the temp constant. It works well, and is low humidity. I keep still sealed cheeses, and bottles of wine, and nuts, cocoa powder, dried fruits, occasionally winter squashes, and anything else that would benefit from being kept at constant lower temps.
Friends had on their property an old underground concrete bomb shelter. That would have been perfect except for the periodic standing water. They sealed it up.
|
|
|
Post by brownrexx on Dec 27, 2017 9:54:30 GMT -5
I have an unfinished basement with block walls and a concrete floor. It probably stays around 55 degrees all year so I put some cardboard in the small windows to keep the light out of the half where the chest freezer sits and I keep wooden baskets of butternut squash, potatoes and garlic there. I don't feel that it's cool enough for beets and carrots so I keep those in the refrigerator upstairs.
It's nice to go downstairs and "shop" for food to use for dinner. I also have a pantry closet upstairs where I keep my dry beans and the limited amount of canned goods that I use as well as honey from our beehives and any jam that I have canned.
|
|
|
Post by ladymarmalade on Dec 27, 2017 11:21:06 GMT -5
I was just going through old photo albums looking for something else, and happened upon a picture of my dad and a couple of his grandkids down in his root cellar. It's from sometime in the mid-1970's - no date. On the back of the photograph he had written: "Here is my root cellar, it contains a crock of sauerkraut, a 100 lb burlap bag of potatoes, 1/2 bushel of apples, some leeks, parsley, and black horseradish. Temperature right now is about 42F, but it's possible that when the outside temperature falls to -10 or -20F, then it might fall to 28F which could freeze the potatoes. Will see how well it works -it was mamma's idea!" Oh, what a wonderful picture! And a fun piece of family history to have found.
|
|
|
Post by ladymarmalade on Dec 27, 2017 11:22:13 GMT -5
I have an unfinished basement with block walls and a concrete floor. It probably stays around 55 degrees all year so I put some cardboard in the small windows to keep the light out of the half where the chest freezer sits and I keep wooden baskets of butternut squash, potatoes and garlic there. I don't feel that it's cool enough for beets and carrots so I keep those in the refrigerator upstairs. It's nice to go downstairs and "shop" for food to use for dinner. I also have a pantry closet upstairs where I keep my dry beans and the limited amount of canned goods that I use as well as honey from our beehives and any jam that I have canned. Oooh, I think I would like to shop in your food storage as well!
|
|