Root Cellars: Where is yours?

LocoYokel

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Some type of a winter storage area is needed by many of us northern gardeners for certain rhizome and bulb type plants, as well as produce, to stay cool but above freezing. Those in the south need to keep root stocks cool, not cooked. For those of us unlucky enuff not to have one yet... where and how is your root cellar built?
In my case I have little to no slope to my property so am thinking it needs to go under the mobile with a trapdoor in the leeward porch. My storage needs would primarily be for dahlias, glads and seed so frequent access would not be needed. Maybe a cinder block box inside the skirting with a low watt bulb for super cold times? If the pipes don't freeze the rootstocks shouldn't, right?
O boy, the more I think about this the more questions come up so I will get back to the first:

Where is your root cellar?
 

flowerbug

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in the north, put it on the north side of any structure.

i daydream all the time about putting another room on this one for a pantry and storage space. we have a pretty small house and there isn't much storage space besides a few closets. these days if i am going to buy something i have to decide what goes out in exchange.

a root celler or pantry one thing i sorely miss here. we use the garage for some things that don't mind being frozen (the garlic doesn't seem to mind).

the front closet is our pantry. and it is a hassle when we've got it loaded up. last year we finally cleaned it out and gave away about 20 cases of various things we had put up and are now downsized quite a bit.

when we have had extra this season we've been making sure we have people who want them right away so the jars are not piling up. and we're not doing as many tomatoes (since i can't eat them). the days of doing several hundred quarts of those are now done (i hope).
 

digitS'

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I have built and had various rooms for roots throughout my seasons as gardener. Currently, I live in a 100+ year old house. The foundation was built in 3 parts and the original has basalt walls and a room with a dirt floor. You know what our dirt is like and at 8', it's nearly 100% gravel. If your situation is the same, you probably should not have (might be better off without) a concrete floor.

I noticed @Gardening with Rabbits ' thoughts on zone 6 winters. There are problems with those designations and 1 is that we have -15°f winter days, now and then. The 2nd year after we moved into this house it was -26°. Extended days with below zero weather and that room temperature will fall to 35°. I don't worry too much about it but I don't really want to open the door to the more modern half basement where the gas furnace is chugging along keeping the upstairs warm. The temperature of the soil at that depth is about 50°, year round.

Is it perfect for everything? Absolutely not. Storage click I guess that it's the dry conditions that helps with my onions and do not help with my potatoes. The dahlias are in peat moss and sit on the floor. I've wondered if the potatoes would be okay in peat moss and not take on a strange flavor. I once hauled sand down there for carrot storage. Never Again!!

I dig a pit in a garden bed and store carrots, parsnips and celeriac in it when I have more than the crisper drawers can take. Covered with about 8" of soil and a couple of feet of leaves, it works well! I wonder how the potatoes would do in that. Beets do okay.

The other basement in the home I had 25 years ago might well have been called a cellar. It was only under the kitchen in that house so it wasn't even a half basement. There was a concrete floor and the water heater and shelves. The dahlias did okay there, also.

Years ago, I built a cabin with a concrete foundation and half basement. No concrete on the basement floor but the cabin floor with its wood heater and cast iron kitchen stove sitting above wasn't insulated and it really should have been.

Before that, I put a cellar down with log walls and ceiling. Then, I built a woodshed over the top. I think that was a mistake but I didn't live in that home long enough to know when the walls and ceiling collapsed ;).

Steve
 

Smart Red

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I store over winter in the darkest, coolest corner of the basement. Then I cover everything to keep it dark.
Soon I hope to have an even better corner for storage now that we're keeping the basement warmer for using the theater area.

We took out the oil tank and now have access to the old piping that runs from outside to the inside carrying oil. Son is building an insulated wall to separate this area from the warmer basement space and I purchased several good metal bakery shelving for storage.

Gonna love it.
 

bobm

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In our area of SW Washington, due to the amount of annual rainfall, the water table is so high that many of the homes around here will have several inches of water under the house' s crawl space. Last year a developer started to build a new subdivision, got about half of the area built and by Feb. found that almost all of the homes had 1-3" of water in the crawl spaces. Stoped finishing to build out the subdivision. Thankfully ,we do not get our crawl place filled with water. Even so, we depend on the cold storage facilities that supply the grocery stores.
 

flowerbug

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In our area of SW Washington, due to the amount of annual rainfall, the water table is so high that many of the homes around here will have several inches of water under the house' s crawl space. Last year a developer started to build a new subdivision, got about half of the area built and by Feb. found that almost all of the homes had 1-3" of water in the crawl spaces. Stoped finishing to build out the subdivision. Thankfully ,we do not get our crawl place filled with water. Even so, we depend on the cold storage facilities that supply the grocery stores.

we have a pretty high water table too during the wetter parts of the year. i wish they had built this place a little higher above grade. i don't like having to rely upon a sump pump to keep the crawl space dry. a few times we have had power outages and there has been some water standing down there. luckily we do have everything critical propped up and gravity drainage has been enough to avoid the furnace getting flooded. so far.

we can have some flash flooding if the rains get heavy enough.

a cellar off to the north of this room would be nice in that it would provide more insulation from the cold during the winter months. if i made it sturdy enough i could put a garden on top of it. :) heck for that matter i want to do that to this room too but i would have to redo the walls to support that much weight and then there is the issue of the central hexagon shaped roof and snow i'd need to figure out and that then turns that idea into such a major expense it wouldn't be worth it. but a guy can dream right? :)
 

digitS'

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but a guy can dream right? :)
When I was a kid, I'd imagine underground tunnels running to special rooms. I could never think of what could be in those rooms other than treasure :) and that was too static.

The old house I live in probably shows a good deal more of its history from below than up in the daylight including what is coming through the windows.

The farmhouse from my childhood had a large utility room. There was a half bath out there and room for a large freezer. Also, a separate room with very thick walls and a heavy insulated door. I imagine that it was sawdust as insulation.

We only used it for what little canned goods that Mom did but I wonder how well an above ground room with passive temperature control would work. The utility room was far enough from the wood stove heat source that it was usually chilly.

I'm always frustrated by my remote thermometers in the springtime protected growing but, at least, a cold room wouldn't have walls and roof of plastic film or glass.

Steve
 

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