The Root Cellar

A couple times I've mentioned my "root cellar". The root cellar is just an area of the basement where I store vegetables that don't need to be refrigerated. Like a real root cellar, its cool but not cold, moderately humid, and relatively dark. I've had mixed results with storage down there. Onions and garlic have worked pretty well. Carrots not so much. Some of last year's spaghetti squash (harvested in fall of 2010) rotted within a month, but there is still a 5lb specimen that looks perfectly fine. Some potatoes have been fine, while others went soft or rotted.

My recent harvest of 40+ pound of potatoes got washed, then put in a somewhat breathable satchel and put on the floor in the root cellar. A couple weeks after putting them there, I went to grab a bunch to take to some friends, and I found that quite a few of them were rotten. Like smelly juices soaking through the bottom of the bag and making a puddle rotten. Some of the potatoes had holes and blemishes in them when I harvested them, so I suspect that they were either already rotting inside or the water from washing them provided enough moisture to allow bacteria or fungus to thrive. I definitely should have at least let the potatoes dry out thoroughly before putting them in the bag and leaving them in the basement.

Between the potatoes that rotted, the ones that I gave away, and the ones that we've eaten, I'm probably down to about 15+lbs. In the picture below, you can see a three-tier wire rack that I'm using for storage. It contains the loose produce and still allows good ventilation. The top level is onions and garlic and the lower two levels are the remaining potatoes. In the bottom right you can also see the 13+ month old spaghetti squash.