I would love to have a root cellar, but I need to get better at gardening first! lol

jcat - a root cellar is on my list, too! Have you read 'putting food by'? It has good info on preserving in cellars, and how to build or section off one, what temp/humidity each crop needs, and how long each one will last in storage. We just moved to an old house that has a basement, and I want to get part of it set up for food storage. We moved in late spring this year, so we don't have much of a garden this year, but next year we should have some to store.

Great topic!
Carol

I want Santa to bring me a nice well.

Larry

I think putting food by is on my wishlist. I think I checked it out @ one time. It was when we lived in town, so I didn't have as much space to work with. DH should be happy to create me a place to store my canned stuff. Then we wouldn't have food under our bed!

Just a word to the wise, from personal experience old houses with basements easily become old houses with downstairs pools. Hard to think of in this drought time.

Thanks for the review! I'll put it on my wishlist for the library. I already own the other root cellaring book by... the Bubels?

Now that we have a basement, I want to do a quickie root cellar partition. It won't be as good as a "real" root cellar but at least it'll get done before I'm 130.

Larry, we left our well at the old place. You're more than welcome to go pick it up since we're not using it.

Diane

Thanks for the reminder on Putting Food By. It's also one I used to own and I had forgotten about it. I did just check Amazon for this sort of thing and they have a whole lot of books available for very little money. I've often been able to pick up an excellent volume for under $3, plus the $4 shipping fee. I think the last one I got was a grand total of $4.50, including shipping! I just look for the ratings for the sellers, and the description of the condition, and I've never gotten a bad or tattered book. They also carry a lot of the Storey publications for country folks.

I just wish I'd kept my old copy of Ruth Stout's book on mulch. To find another one now would cost me about $45. Yikes. The garden and I can live without it, but it would still be nice to have.

Pat

phj - yep, we know all about basements in Tulsa - there ain't no dry ones. When the big snow melted last winter our basement floor lifted up a smidgeon, which was disconcerting, but that's the worst of it... so far.

I have a storm cellar I tried to store my potatoes in one year and they all sprouted! From my experience the humidity is an issue with any non-climate controlled structure. BUT maybe it's my inexperience, I just sort of tossed mine down there with layers of newspaper. I'll have to check out these books y'all are talking about.