Who has a root cellar and what do you still have in it. I am thinking about one and may build one this summer. Konrad has a nice one and I hope he chimes in here.
I just have a “fridge cellar”, an old fridge in my basement. I didn’t cellar too much this year but I still have some GoldRush left. They taste almost the same as when I put them in at this point – I feel like they need more cellar time! I also cellar my fuzzy kiwis, though we have eaten nearly all of them. The kiwis have to be cellared for a few months or they will be hard and sour.
I did put in a cellar area when I remodeled the basement a few years ago, but it doesn’t get cold enough (great for wine though). I would need to get one of those vents with a thermometer to vent in some outdoor air to cool it. If my fridge gets too full I will look into one of those vents.
Scott
PS I think Konrad is staying at GW, I don’t think he made an account here.
@bberry don’t know why it took me so long to see this, but yes I have a root cellar of sorts.
When we built our barn/GH a few years ago, the W end was dug into a hill. I am using the NW corner of that foundation as a root cellar. It has 2 sides concrete foundation, underground (intentionally uninsulated) and two side stud walls with insulation, with an insulated exterior door. So far it has worked fairly well for storage, mostly potatoes and other root crops. The biggest issues I have is it gets too cold and will dip below freezing at times in the winter, so for now I keep an el heater in there set to ~35F. I think this will do better once I finish insulating the ceiling and put in the vents.
There are a couple of books out there on root cellar building and using. From what I’ve gathered, it is best if you can keep fruits separate from vegie crops so the pomme outgassing does not cause ripening in the vegies. Although some say that if you store your apples and the like near the ceiling near the vent, and vegies down low that works.
I do know a few others that have built a root cellar here, and it seems that results vary based on local climate and the details of your cellar. In the NE and midwest, it seems they have more stable temps than we do here in the SW, where it can be sunny and 70F in Jan and then -20F a day later at times. In my locale, it seems that one has to tinker with the vents and the like to help keep the temps stable.
One of my (many) projects is to build a controller which would run a fan and open/close vents in order to stabilize the cellar’s temps, and perhaps run some emergency backup heat and//or cooling. But that is likely to be a ways off.