While root cellars might not do much to increase your personal efficiency, they will help you become more self-sufficient. Much of your garden produce can be stored in a root cellar… if you have one, so here are several links with different ideas for building your own out of materials you might just have on hand!

• The Pallet Root Cellar

• THIS site has lots of info about different types of root cellars, but not too much about building your own. However, it looks very helpful.

• Build Your Own Underground Root Cellar, by Phyllis Hobson, looks like a really good resource as well. HERE

• More root cellar tips HERE.

• Thefoodguys.com has a clever variation on traditional root cellars.

Okay, so you’ve planted a rather large garden, and now you have the produce coming like crazy. What are you going to do? The only answer, besides let it all go to waste, is preserve it in some way or another. We have briefly looked at root cellars; that’s one way to do it, especially for those crops that don’t can well (potatoes, carrots, melons, etc.). Tomatoes, beans, relishes and pickles, jams and jellies, and juices can very well; corn, squash, and peas freeze well. Preserving is yet another thing that must be done if the garden is going to be efficient. You can get lots of produce from it during the growing season, but it is worth so much more when you can still get produce from it, indirectly, in the winter. Some things, like herbs, dry well and can be stored in cool, dry places waiting to be put to use. Preserving is an excellent way to “stretch” you garden! There are lots of places out there to guide you step by step through just about any canning/freezing/drying/preserving method you could want.

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I linked to a couple of websites about root cellars yesterday, including one that told how to change an old freezer or refrigerator into a root cellar. I thought I’d do the same thing today. So, without further ado, here are a few links that tell how to make root cellars, how to pack root cellars, and so on and so forth:

This site tells how to make a root cellar out of pallets.

In this article, Mike Wells tells about his root cellar adventures.

The Return of the Root Cellars is a rather long, but informative article that covers several aspects of a root cellars.

This article tells how to turn a  corner in your basement into a root cellar.

Here’s another article taking you through the steps of turning a basement into a root cellar.

This page lists several food items and what they particularly like in the root cellar.

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The key to root cellaring is knowing when to harvest the produce. There are fairly specific times when only the best produce is harvested for that type of storage. This website has a lot of information about several types of produce that can go into the root cellar as well as having a handy chart at the bottom of the page that shows what temperatures and humidity levels are optimum for many types of produce. For example, winter squash, pumpkins, onions, and garlic like the humidity level much lower than celery, beets, and parsnips.

As well as know when to harvest and how to store though you’ve got to have a working root cellar. Many root cellars are like hobbit holes, if you will, but there are some that are made of things that you may well have in your trash pile. Do you have a use for that old, broken refridgerator? or perhaps it’s a deep freezer? or maybe just a trash can that you don’t have a use for? Well, turn trash into treasure! Solve two problems with one cellar. Don’t worry about hauling that freezer off; use it! This website gives the steps involved in turning your old freezer into a root cellar.

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Have you ever visited an old farmstead or a living history museum where they allow you to go down under the ground into a dark, cool, and damp room? What were your thoughts? Perhaps you thought that it was something akin to the modern day basement. Possibly. Or maybe you immediately guessed the significance of that room for the early pioneers. Root cellars were just about the only way they had to store crops that needed to stay cool in the heat of the summer. They were also used, in the more northern areas, to keep things from freezing in the winter. Well, root cellars are still capable of doing that today. They are a cheap and effective way to store your potatoes, carrots, apples, etc. In the early pioneer days people would have to dig out their cellars with pick axes; today we have the modern convenience of a back hoe.

There are basically three types of root cellars: 1) The ones that are built into the side of a hill. 2) The ones built flat on the level ground, and 3) those that are in someway connected to the main house. We’ll look into these different types in a later post. The main purpose is, and has always been, temperature control. The most effective temperature control is attained about ten feet under ground, but going that far down is not always feasible or practical.

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