Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables (Paperback)

by Mike Bubel (Author), Nancy Bubel (Author) "Our first attempts at storing vegetables for the winter were more or less incidental..." (more)
Key Phrases: root cellaring, new root cellar, root cellar vegetables, Fresh Vegetables, Abundant Life, Southern Exposure (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Anyone can learn to store fruits and vegetables safely and naturally with a cool, dark space (even a closet!) and the step-by-step advice in this book.

From the Back Cover
Root cellaring, as many people remember but only a few people still practice, is a way of using the earth's naturally cool, stable temperature to store perishable fruits and vegetables. Root cellaring, as Mike and Nancy Bubel explain here, is a no-cost, simple, low-technology, energy-saving way to keep the harvest fresh all year long.

In Root Cellaring, the Bubels tell how to successfully use this natural storage approach. It's the first book devoted entirely to the subject, and it covers the subject with a thoroughness that makes it the only book you'll ever need on root cellaring.

Root Cellaring will tell you:
* How to choose vegetable and fruit varieties that will store best
* Specific individual storage requirements for nearly 100 home garden crops
* How to use root cellars in the country, in the city, and in any environment
* How to build root cellars, indoors and out, big and small, plain and fancy
* Case histories -- reports on the root cellaring techniques and experiences of many households all over North America

Root cellaring need not be strictly a country concept. Though it's often thought of as an adjunct to a large garden, a root cellar can in fact considerably stretch the resources of a small garden, making it easy to grow late succession crops for storage instead of many rows for canning and freezing. Best of all, root cellars can easily fit anywhere. Not everyone can live in the country, but everyone can benefit from natural cold storage.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC; 2 edition (January 9, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882667033
• ISBN-13: 978-0882667034
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,426 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #3 in	Books > Cooking, Food & Wine > Canning & Preserving
  #6 in	Books > Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture > Techniques

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

145 of 147 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very clear advice for hanging onto your harvest longer., September 24, 2002

By	Wendy A. B. Whipple (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book for (food) gardeners and for people who have some land available to them. Although there are suggestions for "nooks and crannies" in your house, most of those ideas sound like ideas for older (draftier) homes.

The suggestions for building your own working root cellar are clear, with illustrations to help you plan. There are lists of things that keep well and under what conditions to keep them. The authors even list certain varieties of (for instance) apples that keep better than others. There's a month-by-month plan of what could be coming out of your garden, going into the root cellar, and what could be canned or frozen. If you have a large garden, this is an incredibly useful book.

However, those of us with smaller modern homes, smaller yards, and smaller, less heavily-producing gardens will be a little disappointed. As I read this, I came to the conclusion that it would be pretty darned difficult to have a root cellar on our property, because we don't have a useable cool north corner to put one in. Not impossible, mind you, it would just take a lot more effort, planning, and money to build it.

I recommend this book highly for people who raise substantial amounts of their own produce. This book will really extend your harvest. With imagination and a little time and effort, you can have a root cellar that keeps your family in fresh food you grew all year long.

110 of 111 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Encyclopedia of no-energy food preservation, August 31, 2004

By	Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Root Cellaring: The Simple No-Processing Way to Store Fruits and Vegetables (Hardcover)

This book is a vast resource of information about root cellars, how to build them, and how to use them. The Bubels contend that even city apartments dwellers can arrange some sort of cold food storage area with a little imagination and a few suggestions from those who have done it before. The book has 6 parts: choosing good storage vegetable varieties, harvesting for keeping quality, storing crops in the root cellar, root cellar ideas for those who don't currently have a root cellar, root cellaring experiences, and recipes. At the end of the book is a bibliography for further reading, a list of plant sources, and an index. The book is amply illustrated with diagrams and black-and-white photographs.

I didn't expect to find much in this book that I haven't read elsewhere. Since my house didn't come with a root cellar, I wasn't very optimistic about finding anything in the book that I could use. Fortunately, I was way off-base in these assumptions. I was amazed at the variety and detail of information that the Bubels provide. The sections on choosing seed varieties and determining when to harvest are extremely useful, even if you're only going to put your harvest in the refrigerator. They also explain the different types of storage conditions required for different crops- -some like it cool and moist, and others warmer and dry. But what gave me real hope was all the ideas about un-root cellars that people have constructed and made good use of for storing vegetables. Their examples include everything from insolated window baskets for apartment dwellers to buried package trucks. One idea that might work well for my situation at least for the time being is a buried refrigerator. Down the line, if I have extra time on my hands, I could trade up for a real dug root cellar, following the plans in the book. If you're a gardener, you'll find something of use for sure in this book.

47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book gives the complete root cellaring picture., January 17, 1999

By A Customer

We're fortunate to have bought a property with a well designed root cellar already in place. Until I read this book, I had no idea how a root cellar 'worked'. This book suggests what foods are best for root cellaring, how long to expect to store them, and what temperatures should be maintained. Had I not read this book I would have wasted time and enery, and lost the nutrients in some foods by canning them rather than root cellaring them. A city dweller friend of mine borrowed my book and has decided to buy it. There are variety of good root cellar plans complete with illustrations and drawings for nearly any situation.