Too much of this gas building up in your root cellar will hasten ripening and further decomposition, which is obviously not desirable. Apples are particularly notorious for this. It’s a natural gas given off by some fruits and vegetables as they ripen. There is one additional concern you have to be aware of with storing a variety of foods in a root cellar, and that is ethylene. If anything is starting to shrivel or dry out, take it out for immediate use. Anything that is starting to go bad should be removed immediately as it will spread quickly and ruin an entire basket or bushel. You should always keep an eye on a root cellar and inspect your food regularly. Sawdust, wood shavings or even newspaper will work to pack your food in. A little added insulation inside each box is another good idea. Also leave on outer peels, rinds and leaves before storage. Store-bought vegetables will have little dirt on them to start with so its not that important. Leave them dirty, especially if you have pulled them yourself from the garden. When storing root vegetables, do not wash them first. You can cover your containers with woven wire mesh screen to keep out any rodents, which will be a problem in many dirt floor cellars unless the floor is already lined with screen. Cardboard boxes, open buckets and baskets will all work relatively well. The whole point of the root cellar is to expose your food items to the environment. Unlike most other types of storage methods, you do not necessarily want your food to be sealed up in a container. This will help you to track how effective these numbers are and reflect the best way to maintain your root cellar. Place a temperature and humidity gauge in the cellar and keep a record of the readings. The high moisture levels will rust cans very quickly so reserve your root cellar for unpackaged foods only. Take note that other types of storage food (canned goods for example) should not be stored along with your produce in a root cellar. Keeping a hygrometer in the room to measure humidity is a very good idea. Just add more water to it as the sand dries out. A room that has a dirt floor will usually be damp enough but if you do not have that source for moisture, then you can keep a few buckets of wet sand among your stores. Because air should be moving, you will have to have a source of moisture present to keep the humidity level up. Gases can build up that will hasten the ripening (and degradation) of your food so you have to have some sort of venting to the outside for fresh air. Once you are storing through the summer, most underground places will be too warm. The temperature is much easier to maintain naturally during the winter months, which is why this method works so well as a yearly method to save fresh produce until the next season. Humidity should also be very high, around 90%. Not all vegetables will store best under the same conditions but you should have a space that stays between 32 and 38F (0 and 3C) without dipping below freezing. The specifics of where or how you build a root cellar are less important that you are able to achieve the right environment once it’s in use. Most root vegetables (potatoes, turnips, beets) and apples are well-known for great root cellar storage. There are also limits one what kind of food will store this way. That’s fine for standard food preservation from one season to the next but it usually isn’t the right type of time frame that you need for a good emergency food storage system. The problems come from trying to get the right conditions for what you are going to store and that this method will only extend the life of your food for a few months or possibly to a full year if you are lucky. Once you have the right location and conditions set up, you just store your produce in baskets or buckets and leave as-is in the cellar until you are ready to use them. The biggest positive aspect of using a root cellar is the simplicity. Perhaps it is time to build an underground root cellar. Some vegetables, though, and a few fruits do not do well canned or frozen. What to do? You can process some of it in a pressure canner or freeze it. However, you still have more produce than you can consume. Your garden has come in and the bounty of it has been dispersed to family and friends.
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