Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables

Following right on from Nancy Bubel's book on how to start seeds, this book tells you what to do at harvest. I was pleasantly surprised that it doesn't confine itself to providing information about building underground structures for food storage. It also talks about how to harvest crops (e.g., leave a bit of stem on the squash to protect against rot, and if you miss the boat on that on, melted beeswax to cover the scar will help), how to cure crops, how to use food from storage (including the dilemma of best food first or about-to-spoil food first?), and much more. And the actual root cellars are amazing, unusual, and innovative too.

This is a truly comprehensive reference on root cellaring: selection of storage vegetables, planting strategies, storage techniques, construction information on various styles of root cellars, descriptions of actual root cellars, and recipes to use with storage vegetables. The book is well-organized and thorough, with good illustrations and photos, as well as nice reference tables. I felt the descriptions of actual root cellars dragged and wasn't excited by many of the recipes they suggested (in particular use of nonseasonable ingredients that can't be stored in a root cellar) but I think this is probably the best root cellar bible out there. I plan to buy this one for myself.

Good info on what veggies and fruits keep well, what temp/humidity requirements they have, and how to build your own root cellar for cold storage. Motivated me to build my own.

An immensely useful book for anyone intending to build and stock a root cellar. Age-old technology like root cellaring does not lose efficacy with time, so don't let the age of this book fool you.

Full of useful information…remains to be seen how much I will manage to put into practice!

Starts (counter-intuitively by me) with planting crops, but eventually gets around to describing root cellars. The important things I drew from the book are dirt/gravel flooring, and high and low ventilation.

Natural cold storage of fruits and vegetables