Our winter squash is stored in our house upstairs, which is unheated, but low humidity. The squash keeps until May. Of, course you do have to manage these things and make sure no spoilage is happening, but low or no cost solutions to food storage.

Parsnips and carrots for our dairy cow and us, plus rutabagas and winter beets stay in the garden, mulched with soil to prevent freezing. We harvest as needed and check frequently for vole problems. Since I have started using soil, and not straw as mulch, the voles have been kept in check.

These methods are much easier than canning, freezing and drying everything in sight.

Root cellaring in the house is right out. I keep toying with the idea of planting a dead refrigerator in the yard but there’s a lot of resistance coming from the friend/landlord and it’s his property so that won’t work either. Since the whole place has baseboard radiators with only one thermostat, I can’t do the “no heat” room either. Leaving a window open in the utility room kept it cooler but not cool enough for winter storage. There is a very small amount of space in the coat closet inside the arctic entry way where potatoes were stored and that worked okay until the sun started hitting the outside wall of the building (it’s a south facing wall) and then it was sprout city. It’s quite a sight opening the closet door and seeing 2 ft potato sprouts!

Short of actually digging a hole in the yard and building a subterrannean root cellar (I’ve been mulling over that for a while now…), I’m going to have to go another route for produce storage. My plan is to lacto-ferment, dry and/or can foods that don’t require any special storage requirements other than to stay cool and out of direct sunlight. It’s not the same as fresh (or at least raw) but my housing limitations don’t offer many other choices.

I am going to see if I leave the kale, broccoli, collards and brussels sprouts plants in the garden and mulch the heck out of them that they’ll sprout again in the spring. If not, I’ll just compost the dead parts and call it an experiment.

Kerri in AK

It’s clearly way too cold here to do in-ground storage of anything over the winter, as you’d need power tools to chip the dirt away when you wanted carrots, no matter how well you mulched.

However, I have an old refrigerator that is destined to move to an outdoor shed, and I’m wondering if the interior of that fridge would be workable for keeping things ‘cold but not frozen rock solid’ during the winter.

Things just stored in the shed *will* freeze solid. However, I am thinking that the fridge will provide insulation from the worst of the cold, and so I’m wondering if perhaps the stuff inside will stay nice. There’s no air circulation though, would that be a problem … or a good thing?

How would I go about storing things in a fridge? I’m thinking that things like potatoes would be packed in straw in boxes that fit on the shelves, and slid into the fridge that way … or maybe the crisper drawers could be filled with sawdust and layers of carrots … am I thinking in the right direction?

Thanks for any help!