Cold Storage in My Garden for Late Crops

Credit

I planted very little of a fall garden. I pulled 40 lbs of sweet and russet potatoes about two weeks early. The five heads of cabbages were cut also with a lot of extra leaves still attached. They were all smaller than I liked and the size they should be, but I had to pull them. I pulled about a dozen Danver half longs. That's all that were left in the garden.

I put three 2 lb heads of cabbage in my harvest basket with the carrots to rinse them outside and bring them inside. Wednesday's "Canning with Chef Jo" will tell the preserving of these. The rest of the hurry-up-before-the-big-freeze-hits harvesting lay in milk crates near the house in the garden. I'm cold cellaring them in place.

To cold cellar in place you need some items like styrofoam coolers. You know the kind you can pick up at any store. The cheap ones that keep drinks cool and hold your fish in. Yep, those are the ones. I'll stack the harvest in them. For this harvest, I'll only need about ten of them. 

I'll dig a trench about three feet deep and and three feet wide, and then line it with straw about a foot thick. Place the coolers about a foot apart in this trench. The tops of the coolers are even with the top edge of the trench. Back fill with a mixture of straw and dirt around the coolers until just the lid will be visible.

In the lids of each cooler, I'll stick in one- 1/2" x 3' PVC pipe and one 1/2"x 5' PVC pipe. One (5' length)will be placed at one side of the lid and go down in the cooler within 3" from the bottom. Fill the cooler with produce. The second piece (3' length)of PVC pipe will go on the opposite end of the lid just through the lid. This will create a fresh air intake and an out gassing pipe. Put lid on the coolers.

Cover the whole area with 1-1/2 feet of straw. Top with remaining soil. That's it. You've just created a cold cellar in place. Now if you get several feet of snow during the winter, you'll need to adjust the pipe lengths and the depth of straw covering. You do not want melted snow or ice getting into these pipes. It will rot your produce. I have done this method with an old, broken chest freezer to with some modifications.

During the winter months, you'll need to withdraw and check your stored produce weekly. You are watching for rot and mold. But only do this weekly or every two weeks for the cold storage to hold your produce for months. You may have noticed, I didn't wash my veggies before placing them in the coolers. I just brushed the excess dirt off them but left it alone. Washing the vegetables will promote decay. 

Just to prove how well this system works, my cousin lives in northern Nebraska. She told me about this method she garnered from our grandmother's journals. She has 8-9 months of cold weather. One year it started snowing on Halloween and it didn't get warm again (over 50 degrees) until the 4th of July! (They all went swimming on that 4th too! Brrr!) I can remember winters like that too, except I got smart and moved south. These older bones can't take that much cold. Here in the northeast GA mountains, it's six months tops and that's not very often. 

Y'all have a blessed day! 

Cockeyed Jo