Whether you are looking for a long-term food storage solution to become self-sufficient, save money, or want an abundance of home-produce to last until you need it, putting by vegetables for future use is easy and rewarding. To stockpile vegetables, you won’t need to spend money on specialized equipment or be an expert in the kitchen. With planning and common sense, you can take pride in a larder filled with a tasty, nutritious harvest that will last a year or longer.
To keep the roots, leaves, and fruits of vegetables for future consumption, we must prevent decay. While freezing is an option, it depends on electricity and the availability of storage space. Fortunately, there are other efficient and practical ways to stockpile them for prolonged periods.
A word of warning – ripe fruit such as pears and apples give off a gas called ethylene, which stimulates other fruits and vegetables to ripen in turn. It is best not to store fruit near vegetables that are stockpiled for long-term use.
Vegetables That You Can Store for a Year or Longer and How to Do It
#1. Winter squash and Pumpkin
Winter squash and pumpkin are nutritious and can be used in many recipes during the months when fresh vegetables are scarce. Leave a short stub of the stem when you cut ripe fruits from the vine, wipe the pumpkin with a damp cloth to remove soil, and store on open shelves or in baskets in a cool dark room such as a basement.
#2. Arrowroot
Arrowroot is a water plant with tuber-like roots which grow in soft mud. Compared to other vegetables, arrowroot delivers a meagre harvest and requires some effort to process.
However, it’s an essential addition to your stockpile because of its unique benefits. Because it’s so easily digestible, arrowroot is a suitable food for babies and for adults recovering from a digestive disorder. You can harvest young roots of the plant for eating in spring and early summer. When peeled and cooked, arrowroot tastes like slightly mealy potato. Later in the growing season, the roots become fibrous and inedible and are only good for processing into arrowroot flour.
Peel the roots thoroughly to get rid of the outer layer (it will make your food taste bitter) and pound them to a pulp.
Strain the pulp through a coarse cloth and pour the liquid into a container with a large surface area.
Set the container in the sun or close to a heat source until all the liquid has evaporated and only powder remains.
You can store Arrowroot powder almost indefinitely. For daily cooking, arrowroot powder is an excellent substitute for cornstarch in baking and sauces, and it will make battered fried food deliciously crisp.
#3. Cabbage
The only way to keep cabbage and some other vegetables fresh is to fool them into thinking that they’re still growing. Dig cabbages out of the ground roots and all. Trim the outer leaves and plant each cabbage in a few inches of damp soil or sawdust in a bucket or bin with a lid. Store in the basement; 30 – 45 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal. You can preserve celery and leeks the same way.
Related: How To Make A Mini Root Cellar In Your Backyard In Less Than Two Hours
#4. Carrots
Like cabbage, carrots are fleshy and will start decaying soon after you dig them up. Throughout summer and autumn, harvest only what you can eat within a few days and leave the rest in the ground.
As soon as winter frost starts damaging the tops of the plants, pull up the rest of the crop to prevent it from freezing in the ground and cut off the foliage. Fill buckets or bins with three to four inches of moist sand, lay carrots horizontally almost to the top, then cover over with another layer of sand.
Store your produce in the basement or garage, and you can pull out fresh carrots throughout winter when you need them. This storage method gave rise to the name ‘root cellar’, and you can store tubers such as sweet potato, cassava and yam in the same way.
#5. Parsley and Celery
Parsley and Celery are varieties of the same Mediterranean plant and you can stockpile them as a vital source of vitamin B and C, iron, and dietary fiber for periods when other nutrient-rich vegetables are scarce.
Most people think of these plants as a leafy seasoning in dishes such as soups and stews, but did you know that all parts of parsley and celery plants are edible? You can enjoy the leaves and stems fresh in salads during the summer, and dried for winter together with other savory herbs.
You can store and use parsley and celery roots in the same way as carrots; when you are ready to eat them, scrape clean with the back of a knife and add the chopped roots to the pot.
Related: The 5 Most Common Edible Weeds In Your State
#6. Jerusalem Artichokes
Jerusalem Artichokes are not only tasty and nutritious, but also easy to grow and each plant delivers a prodigious crop of roots which you can harvest in autumn and store in the same way as carrots.
The plants are a type of indigenous North American sunflower and even when planted in pots, the roots will develop well. For the most nutritional benefit, boil Jerusalem artichokes in the skin, like jacket potatoes, and peel once cooled. They can also be fried or used to thicken soups.
#7. Tomatoes
Italians call tomatoes the ‘essence of summer’ and there’s nothing better to add flavor and color to food on cold winter days. Cut ripe tomatoes in half lengthways and lay down well-spaced on suspended netting to make sure that there’s good airflow around the fruit. You can dry tomatoes in direct sunlight.
Turn the tomatoes every day for three to seven days until they’re evenly dehydrated.
Dried tomatoes can be stored in a cool place in airtight containers for six months, or up to two years if you layer them in oil in sealed containers. You can also preserve mushrooms and onions in this way.
Related: If I Could Only Stockpile 10 Foods
#8. Potatoes
Unlike carrots, once a potato harvest is ready, it needs to be dug up, washed and stored at once. This is not a job you can leave until the frosts start; potatoes need to cure before you can stockpile them. Store the potatoes in cardboard boxes or paper bags at temperatures between 45 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 – 100% humidity for a week. During this period the potatoes’ skin will thicken, preserving them for future use.
After 7 to 14 days, you can transfer the potatoes to a dark, cool room such as a basement for long-term storage. Be careful to discard any potatoes with soft spots, broken skin, or other blemishes. Like the proverbial rotten apple, one spoiled potato will start a chain reaction in your stash.
#9. Onions
Suspend your onion crop from the ceiling. Air can circulate between hanging onions, and it prevents excess moisture from causing rot. A string of braided onions is not only practical but looks beautiful in a corner of your kitchen.
Harvest onions on a warm, dry day and let them cure for up to a week by spreading them out in a single layer on the ground. Once the tops have wilted but before they become dry and brittle, braid the onions into a string. Tie off the top with a piece of twine, which you can use to hang them. Garlic can also be stockpiled this way, and a corner of the pantry or the basement is a good place to store them.
#10. Salsify
Never heard of it? That’s probably because it’s such an ugly-looking root. In the age of photogenic food, it’s fallen out of vogue, but during the 18th and 19th century, salsify was a staple in the US and Europe, and today it grows wild on uncultivated land.
Salsify is a hardy relative of the dandelion, easy to grow, and the roots are resistant to disease and most pests. It’s a good source of dietary fiber, vitamins B and C, and minerals such as iron, calcium, and potassium. As a bonus, you will probably love to eat this taproot.
Greengrocers call salsify the oyster plant and compare the taste to sea mollusks. The flavor intensifies the longer you store it. Stockpile salsify roots in the same way as carrots.
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I don’t think I will be doing this to my tomatoes this summer. Couple things come to mind. That fruit is exposed for three to seven days in the wide open. Birds fly by and poop quite often, and the tomatoes are prime targets. And when the birds are done pooping they are hungry and will swoop down to help them selves. And rabbits at night will eat up their fill. Not to mention all the insects that will feast on your hard work. Then the wind blows and gives your tasty half eaten poop covered tomatoes a great layer of dirt and whatever else it wants to blow your way. Then that pesty unexpected rain hits and , well , you know. No, I will stick to canning.
I sun dry our persimmons. You can buy food tents from a couple of mail order places at a very reasonable price. As soon as I make a list of the names, I will post them on this list. I use cookie cooling sheets (I think that is what they are called They are made of wire, coated with a release coating formulated in half inch squares. They must be smaller than the food tents. I place the persimmons (tomatoes) on the cookie sheets, place them in the sun as soon as the sun hits my drying patch (or I get up) and leave them all day until the sun leave that drying patch. I use a pair of saw horses with planks laid on them (or a sheet of plywood works too) place the cookie drying racks on the plywood and cover them with the food tents. The tents are pop up and are designed to be used to keep insects from picnic food. If you get housewares catalogs you will see them. They are usually sold in sets of 3 and cost less than $10 ro a set. At the end of the day, the drying racks go back in the house (or shed or garage) If those areas aren’t insect free, I would put the tents over the racks. If it is in your kitchen (hopefully insect free) I just set them out on the counters and stove top. Repeat as necessary. Usually takes about five days for the persimmons to reach the stage that I like. During the winter I store the food tents folded in a mailing tube in the garage. The cookie cooling sheets go back in their regular storage.
Well, I found them on Wdrake.com and, of course, on Amazon. In fact, Amazon has an amazing assortment of food tents. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
They come in a variety of sizes and of course prices. The nicest thing about food tents is that they fold up for easy stowing in winter.
Alright thanks
Make a frame from 1″X 2″ trim boards. Staple screen material on one side. Take 2 of these, and fit hardware latch that will hold in either the bottom or top position. You can naturally dehydrate w/o the bugs and critters and bird poop. I have reused mine for 12 years so far and no end in sight. Great for drying herbs, any kind of veggie or fruit. Totally worth the investment for me.
Chris thanks for suggestion
Thanks for those reminders, my friend. I believe the best thing next to canning tomatoes is to dehydrate them. Doing this makes them last for years, and because they’re concentrated Now, The taste in a stew a very savory.
Italians have done sundried tomatoes for centuries. In today’s modern era, I can’t comprehend that we can’t replicate such technology sans bird poo and debris. How about some cheesecloth as a tented cover atop the setup, and bring it all inside nightly or in event of rain (i.e. garage or sunroom)? Its bit of work, but so is canning.
How about putting them in your sunny yard? Birds don’t like people and watching the weather forecast and putting them under cover at night or when you need to!
use a dehydrator. or cover them with plastic if you use the sun.
Not a veggie but you can water store your eggs as well
I know some people use water glass, and I was thinking of using lime in water. Do you have any experience with storing eggs in lime water? Do they taste different after a long time of storage? Thank you!
I use lime water for eggs for last 2 years. They do not taste different but as they get older the white becomes thinner. Not a problem for scrambled or baking
“Store in the basement; 30 – 45 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal. You can preserve celery and leeks the same way.” If the subject of the article is vegetables you can stockpile for a year, just who has a basement that is kept at 30-45 degrees Fahrenheit–even in winter?
Just sayin’.
I think the 30-45 degrees may be a misstatement as that is below freezing and vegetables stored at 30°F will eventually partially freeze. That is almost refrigerator temperatures and while I don’t recall the exact temperature off the top of my head that dietitians recommend to keep your ‘fridge at for maximum food preservation, those temps are certainly in that range.
You are correct. I don’t think root cellars reached those temps unless, perhaps in the northern tier states and perhaps the midwest during an especially cold front.
If I am not mistaken, root cellars were built below the freeze line so that the food in them wouldn’t freeze. While freezing would keep the food preserved, as soon as they thawed after the ground thawed the food would rot more quickly than if it were stored cold but not freezing.
When I was young we lived in a house that had a dirt floor cellar with two rooms. One room held the heating equipment and the hot water tank. The other room had a door to close it off from the heater room and that room was cool all summer and cold enough in the winter that if you spent any time in there you wanted to wear a sweater or jacket. It probably served as a root cellar at one time as the house was close to 100 years old when we lived there. My mother stored her home-canned foods in there during WWII and they kept quite nicely. But it never froze in there.
I do
It is unfortunate that many people in our society look for what they considered to be negatives and dwell on those. I appreciate that information which is usable for me and don’t consider it my place or duty to criticize. I am just grateful for the work and the effort that has gone into sharing this information. I will use what is appropriate to me and resist any criticizing of things which may be usable to others but not to me. Thank you.
This is from kitchen.com: “The ideal temperature range for your fridge is 35 to 38 degrees Fahrenheit.
Bacteria growth starts tripling around the 40 degree mark and things freeze at 32, so we’re sticking with 35 to 38 as a goal.”
The Home Depot website recommends a refrigerator temperature of 36°F as ideal.
If we all knew everything there is to know, websites such as this would be totally unnecessary and Claude would have to find another source of income.
There are many areas where each of us has a bit of knowledge to contribute and those little bits here and there from each of us add to our growing store of knowledge.
I totally agree with you, Practical, that a negative comment that does nothing to add to the article but just denigrates it is useless to all of us. However, if there is an error in the article or if something stated in the article seems incorrect, I don’t think it remiss to either question it in, hopefully, a manner that isn’t insulting or hypercritical or demeaning, but instructively critical. I realize that sometimes is difficult to do as some of us seem to find demeaning criticism easier than offering meaningful criticism or else don’t know the difference.
I think Survivormann’s question was well founded. I would think a basement that was in the 30 to 45 degree range would have an overall effect on livability of the upper portions of the house. Certainly the heating bill would be significant. If the basement temperature remained close to 30 degrees much of the winter, it would be challenging to store anything liquid in the basement. It either would be so viscous as to need some period of time to reach the temperature range where it was usable or it would freeze and likely be unusable.
So, I think pointing out that the temperature range suggested might be on the low side is appropriate. I think we all have a duty to other readers to question statistics or suggested numbers that appear incorrect.
If Survivormann and I are incorrect in our questioning of those temperatures, April can certainly respond and tell us, “Hey, guys, I took those figures from Buckeye University Agricultural Department’s treatise on root cellars in the Upper Ohio River Valley and that is what their study found the temperature range of root cellars in January to be.”
In which case, Survivormann and I would stand corrected and we would all know that such temperatures were correct and look for ways to make our basements that cold in the wintertime if we wanted to turn them into a root cellar.
I would support your statement that comments like “This is al bull whackey” don’t add anything to the list and are better not posted. They don’t show that the poster is brilliant or even knows anything about the topic under discussion.
I think a statement like, “This sounds like too much work for me,” or “We are just too old and feeble to do this” are certainly acceptable comments to an article. And for me, anyway, sometimes a humorous comment is a welcome relief from the generally overall serious content of most articles. Humor is different things to different people. What I might find sidesplittingly, rolling on the floor funny, someone else might not find funny at all. However, we should remember that there seems to be too much sensitivity in the U.S. today, we ought to be able to enjoy a laugh without getting all torqued out of shape at a unintended but perceived insult.
End of sermon.
What about ramps? They smell to high heaven but they are tasty.
I didn’t know what ramps were. Wikipedia reveals that they are also known as wild leeks and are considered a delicacy in Canada where they are an endangered species due to over harvesting. I would suspect that they are handled just like any other onion or garlic produce but that is just an uninformed opinion.
Chuck
Ramps might be endangered in Canada but they grow all over the swampy areas around but not in the old Ravenna arsenal and West Branch lake. By the way…..dont let your kids take them to school. Their teacher will not so politely ask you to stop. 🙂
You must be in Tennessee or Kentucky to mention Ramps. They also take 72 hours to get that smell out of your body. A ramp is like an onion but much stronger.
Thanks for this information! I appreciate having other options if I cannot can or freeze vegetables. And, it may be important to know if we ever face an EMP strike, or anything, that might take power out for a long time. I will print this valuable information and keep it on file for when needed!
Regarding potatoes, don’t forget the sweet potato. Some may just automatically think of the traditional potato. Sweet potatoes are loaded with nutrition that would serve us well in a SHTF situation.
Sweet potatoes actually keep better than the traditional white potato. We get a year out of them without problem storing in the basement around 50-55 degrees
In ‘regular’ potato varieties, we find the Yukon Gold (slightly yellow-white flesh) keeps much better than traditional solid white variety like Kennebec (most grown in our area). Both are best kept if around January you rub the sprouts off that are trying to form new growth.
As for root cellar temps, most of the US, ground temps run in the 45-50+ range all year. The only way I get mine into the low 40’s is by the use of forced fan ventilation. I have a 6″ intake pipe and a 6″ exhaust with a small ‘duct booster’ fan mounted in it, fan on a timer to run from midnite to around 6am. I’ll plug the fan into the timer when outside temps are 40 or lower so it sucks cold air into the cellar during the night. From about December to March, I simply leave it plugged in. This lowers the temp of the mass of walls and cast concrete ceiling, and allows me to get the cellar lower (and faster) than ground temps would normally permit.
I built my cellar with 2″ foam insulation on top the cast concrete ceiling, which is covered with 18″ of dirt. The door is homemade 1×6 cedar outside, 1″ foam core, 1/2″ plywood on the inside.
I won’t be forgetting the sweet potato, delicious, nutritious, easy to grow, easy to store. Flint corn was the primary survival crop for 19th century Texas homesteaders. Easy to grow, the ears are allowed to dry on the plant, then stored in bulk in a dry place. Fodder for all farm animals, ground for humans and served in some form with almost every meal.
Now I’m going to try Jerusalem artichokes and dried persimmons this year, as well.
IvyMike: In the fall, Hachiya dried persimmons are a delicacy found in stores everywhere in Japan. Hachiya persimmons have to be dried before they can be eaten, otherwise they are very astringent with a strong alum taste. Or once they reach a jelly-like state they are very sweet, almost like candy.
Once dried they are truly a delicacy. Doing them by the traditional Japanese method, while it makes the the best eating is very time consuming and laborious and is best done when the nights get close to or just around freezing.
My wife used to dry persimmons the traditional way but these days neither of us have the energy for that. I either sun dry them or dry them in the oven or a food drier.
I peel the persimmon, and quarter it if it is small or cut it into eighths if it is a larger fruit. I set it with the widest part of the fruit on the screen device. I like Chris’s suggestion for a drying rack and wish I had made one years ago. However now I am set up for the way I dry. If I were starting over, I think I would make the drying rack that Chris suggested and lay it on the sawhorses. I would still take it in at night because critters like persimmons too and a big raccoon or possum might knock it to the ground and help himself to my efforts.
I don’t know how the U.S. native persimmons dry (also called pawpaws) as here on the left coast almost all of the varieties are Japanese variety persimmons or some hybrid variety.
I wouldn’t bother drying fuyu persimmons as they are too good to eat fresh. If the hachiya persimmon is soft and squishy, don’t throw it out. That is when the flesh is the best, when it is almost like jelly. They take forever to dry out but dry to a consistency like fruit jells.
Good luck with your persimmons this fall.
Reading about persimmons, makes my mouth water for persimmon pudding which is more like a very moist bread. Here are two recipes I have for persimmons:
Persimmon Pudding
* Ripe persimmons (enough to make 2 cups of persimmon pulp)
* 3 cups milk
* 2 cups sugar
* 2 eggs
* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* Dash of cinnamon
* 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
* Whipped cream
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the skin and seeds from the persimmons and puree the pulp in a blender or food processor. In a large bowl, combine the pulp, milk, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla extract, and cinnamon until well mixed. Stir in the chopped nuts, if desired. Pour the mixture into an ungreased 9- by 13-inch baking pan and bake for 70 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Serve warm with whipped cream. Serves 8.
OR
Persimmon Pudding Cake
Ingredients
* 2 cups of Hachiya persimmon pulp
* 4 eggs
* 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), melted
* 3/4 cup milk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 1/2 cups flour
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1 teaspoon ginger
* 1 teaspoon all spice
* 1 cup chopped nuts – pecans or walnuts
* Whipping cream
Method
1 Preheat oven to 400°F. In a large bowl, mix the persimmon pulp, eggs, butter, milk and vanilla.
2 In a separate bowl mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.
3 Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, a third at a time, fully incorporating after each addition. Add the chopped nuts.
4 Bake in a square glass pan, buttered, at 400°F until done (about 50 minutes).
Top with a dollop of whipped cream.
Serves 8.
My grandmother had a tin that looked like an angel food cake pan for baking, but quite a bit smaller than an angel food cake pan; hers also had a lid on it that we used when we made persimmon pudding. But in all my moves, somehow it got lost. We baked the persimmon pudding in it and set it in a pan of water whilst baking.
When we were younger my wife used to make persimmon cookies. The neighbor down the street had a huge hachiya persimmon tree and he didn’t like them in any form except for persimmon cookies. I used to harvest his tree and my wife would bake him a batch of persimmon cookies in exchange for hundreds of hachiya persimmons every year. He died and the new folks don’t like persimmons and don’t want anyone harvesting them either, so the crows have a feast.
If I can find her recipe for persimmon cookies, I will post it.
Leanybean: Thanks for the persimmon recipes. I copied them and if I am feeling especially industrious this fall, I will try one or both.
Hi Chuck..
Actually the American persimmon or Common persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) and the Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) are 2 very different plants/trees/fruits.. both are native to the forests of the Eastern US. They both like zones 4 – 8 .. The pawpaw takes about twice as long to bear fruit (5-7 years) as the American persimmon (3-4 years)..The pawpaw requires cross pollination Both can be found in native foods nurseries on the west coast. I’ve been looking as I hunger for both..
don’t think this will work for me.. I live in FLORIDA!
MJ: With the hot Florida sun, you should be able to sun dry lots of fruits and vegetables if you screen them. See Cris’s description of how to make a food drying rack.
Cheese cloth. Put it over your trays to keep the bugs off. IF sun drying is not practical in your circumstances consider hitting a large yard sale for a electric dehydrator. (I have yet to go to a large sale that didn’t have one. The record is THREE at one sale. LOL) I paid 10 bucks for mine and got a second one of the same kind at another sale for 5 bucks that didn’t work, allowing me to add trays to my working one)
Yard sales is a great idea. I have found plenty of good deals at yard sales. Thanks Cass!
When I was growing up in Northwestern Pennsylvania, my mother would always leave a few root vegetables–carrots and parsnips in the ground until spring and then when she would dig the area in the spring, she would cook them.
Any root crop, put a heavy mulch over them and let them go till needed. We did that with part of a field of potatoes, once. They were fine even after a cold, dry winter. Sweet potatoes, ever use an upside down grow bag? I get mine at a Dollar store for a buck, each. When the sweet potatoes are ready, cut off the vines and hang them someplace where they’ll dry. We’ve kept them for months that way.
Aren’t field mice a problem when you leave root crops in the soil. Especially if you would mulch them.
Mice are always a problem. I had meadow voles hollow out potatoes one year. A small copperhead showed up to hide under the mulch (wood chips). I let her alone and that was pretty much the end of the meadow voles. Mice in a storage unit are worse, spreading diseases over root crops. If the mice bother growing crops, then pull the mulch aside and sprinkle with red peppers. Crops can be harvested and stored in a ‘cellar’ underground. You can make a box of hardware cloth, 1/4 inch, and enclose them in that. Spread ground chili peppers over them. Mice can’t handle the heat. Here, it’s ground squirrels. Most rodents can tunnel from one plant to the next, eating most of the tubers or roots, and the plant looks fine. Where we are now, no copperheads, but there is a rattler that makes life hell for the ground squirrels. He has a bad habit of laying by the back door, nights, hoping Bubba (dachshund) will come out to dinner. But, with him around, the garlic and turnips are OK, and the potatoes and so on. Like a neighbor lady told him, the night is yours. Day time is mine and the eagle’s 🙂 niio
The Japanese leave daikon which is the large Japanese white radish that you sometimes see in markets with specialty produce departments, in the ground during the winter. When they want one, the just carefully dig it up and take it in the house to prepare. The NHK program showing winter storage of daikon was in snow country and the ground was covered with about a foot of snow. I don’t know if that makes a difference or not. I suspect here in SoCal, ground storage overwinter might not work. Will have to give it a try next winter.
If the radish freezes, it get watery. With plenty of snow, it’s unlikely the ground freezes. Don’t know your weather in winter. Here, south central AZ, we get freezes and some snow. Black Schifferstadt and those small red ones radishes did well but as soon as it warmed up, they sent up flower stalks. That’s OK, as well. The seed pods are tasty, like a mild radish. We can leave a lot of root crops under a heavy mulch or old rugs. niio
Arrow root? Canna lilies are just as good, usually giving a lot of pounds for a small planting. They tolerate drought and flooding both, full sun or partial shade. Plus they look good. Leaves are eatable and shoots are called Inca asparagus. Zone 8 to 11, they’re a perennial. No tending them. Leave them alone to thrive. This old-fashioned American native is used extensively in all parts of the world but the US. Here, it’s a flower, not food, and would make a great addition to a hidden (in the open) food garden.
I like the idea of preserving celery, rather than drying it. Cabbage, though, stores real well on the north side of a building if buried in wet leaves or wet sawdust. It kept all winter for us (back in Penna). Here, it is a winter vegetable.
Jerusalem artichokes are a major sugar source in much of the world. The problem, they have to be stored at high humidity for several months to make the starch convert to fructose. Native Americans left them in the ground and took them as needed. The same can be done with acorns, to naturally leach tannin and when the acorn sprouts, it’s a sweet.
Red. You sent some Jerusalem artichokes. Very different climate but they did fine here.
Jerusalem artichokes grow well here even in high mountain desert country. I leave them in the ground digging a few a long as needed. Some freezing doesn’t seem to hurt them. I’ve seen -20° nights here and they still grow again in the spring. Sometimes I dig a gallon bucket of tubers if its going below zero because it will be too hard to dig any up for a while.
I disagree with the recommendations on potatoes. We stored at least 20 bushels every winter. My dad dug them, put on top of row, let air dry several days, knock or rub off dirt clumps, store in basement. We never washed them and ate from that big bin all winter long. Our basement had a dirt floor and a native spring run from the NE to the SW corner of the house,. where we kept out milk cool. We never had a thermometer in the basement, but the water in the spring run never froze, nor did all the canned food, fruit, veggies, and meat freeze. It was not heated.
They do store well on a dirt floor. Dad used to huckster, and we stored them by the ton. But, because the township decided to straighten a curve, we lost 20 feet in front of the house and things began to freeze. We had to insulate the wall. We almost lost an egg contract because of things freezing. You know, them farm-fresh eggs farmers store till the truck picks them up. Our eggman came about about once a month. 🙂 Best place to store potatoes is in the ground under a heavy mulch. Same with carrots. Winter radishes can handle freezing temps, but will go to seed as soon as it warms up.niio
Like someone said, we live in Florida. No basements, and the water table is too high along the coast and between two rivers, to put anything in the ground. It floats right up and pops out of the ground. What to do?
Grandma lived a@wayz out of Pensacola. House was built with a good service space under the flour. She built a kitchen cabinet with hardware cloth bottom and shelves to where it vented into the attic. Veggies would keep for months in that cabinet. I had one almost like it in a home built in 1930 in Napa, California. It had a flour bin in the base with shelves above. I kept my fresh veggies and baking supplies on the shelves. I’ve always wanted another one.
God blessed Arizona. Everything is going solar, and that always included food drying. If you can’t leave potatoes in the ground (and here, you can), slice or dice and dry. Save only those you want to keep for the next crop. I have a perennial potato barrel that’s in the sun all winter (Zone 9 A) and shaded by wild tobacco and amaranth all summer. Right now, terapy beans are climbing the vines, LOL.
Sunchokes are good producers, but here need water in summer. But, that’s true even of many native crops. Each year something will fail but that’s life. We have to use zinc on maise and so on because of dwarf maize mosaic zinc kills viral infections) and on beans thanks to curly top. The soil is 8.5+ Ph and sulfur helps for most things as does mulching and compost. niio
red, I really like this Gardenate.com planting calendar and am getting better results using it.
The tepary beans are dying off, but I planted black-eyed peas alongside to replace them and they are doing great, producing more than the tepary beans did! I still have potatoes going in several bags and containers, will continue harvesting when the tops start browning, then refresh the soil with a little compost and replant seed potatoes to keep them continually in a growing cycle. This planting calendar says to plant squash and watermelons in SEP, so I planted a few more Kabocha, Spaghetti Squash, mango melons, and watermelons. All have sprouted and are growing, but the watermelons seem to be slower growing than all the others. The 12″ guava tree my wife brought home in early spring is now 6′, still growing very well, and even had three flowers even though it’s only about a year old, two flowers are now tiny little fruits about an inch in diameter. The fig I bought last fall has new growth, but not nearly as much as the guava, and the fig did not flower, so maybe it will flower next year when it’s two years old – we shall see!
Probably two of the best veggies were left off the list, field corn and dried beans. The corn is a great source of carbs that take little prep and dried beans are a great source of protein. Both last year’s if kept dry and unprocessed.
I built my dehydration system from some scrap lumber, plywood, and covered it with a reclaimed glass door from an old set of French Patio Doors. Sprayed the interior with black enamel paint,
Rack on the bottom supports trays and allows air to circulate from holes near the bottom on one side to holes near the top on the other. (Holes are screened to keep out the critters…)
Works better than my electrically powered one…
did have up the number of vent holes as it got to hot on the first evolution…