Do we really need a refrigerator to keep garden vegetables all winter?

I've been thinking about this because it seems like we spend a lot of money solving a problem that the ground has been solving for a very long time.

You grow potatoes, carrots, beets, cabbage, onions, squash, maybe some apples.

Then winter comes.

And suddenly those same vegetables need electricity, refrigeration, plastic bags, grocery-store trips, or some combination of all four.

But a root cellar is basically doing the opposite.

Instead of creating cold with electricity, you're using the temperature of the earth and the cold winter air to create a stable place for food.

What I find interesting is that you don't necessarily need a big underground cellar to do it.

A proper dug-in cellar is one option.

But if you have a basement, you can build a small insulated room in the coldest outside corner and use the foundation walls and surrounding earth as part of the temperature control.

And if you don't have a basement?

There are smaller versions.

A cold closet on an outside wall.

An unheated garage.

Even a well-insulated box on an enclosed porch can give you some of the same benefit in the right climate.

The part that really surprised me, though, is that the storage conditions matter almost as much as the cellar itself.

Potatoes want cold, dark and humid.

Carrots like cold and even more moisture, which is why storing them in damp sand works so well.

Cabbage wants colder, drier conditions.

Winter squash actually wants it warmer and dry.

And apples are better kept away from the other produce because of the ethylene they give off.

So it isn't simply:

> "Put everything in the basement and hope for the best."

There's a whole little system going on.

I've also been wondering about the economics.

If you've already grown the food, you're not really trying to make the food cheaper at this point.

You're trying to keep what you already grew from becoming waste.

That seems like an overlooked part of frugality.

A small root cellar doesn't have to replace a refrigerator either. It can simply take some of the workload away from it.

So I'm curious about the Permies crowd:

[size=12] Do you actually use a root cellar, cold room, earth cellar, buried box, or some improvised version of one?

And I'd really like to hear from people in different climates.

What works in a cold northern climate may be completely wrong in a hot or humid one.

If you built one, what did you get wrong the first time?

If you inherited one, what feature are you most glad it has?

And if you don't have one, what's stopping you — climate, groundwater, lack of space, cost, or simply not seeing enough benefit to justify building it?

I'm especially interested in the improvised versions.

What's the cheapest root-cellar setup you've seen actually work?[/size]

What is stopping me?

I live in a part of Texas where a root cellar is not a thing.

First too many big rocks to dig a hole.

Second, the soil temperature is too warm.

That picture is a cute above ground root cellar though something like that probably is not possible where I live due to sourcing dirt and it would probably be too hot inside.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and I am sure there are several on the forum that this will be of interest.

Other than seeing the root cellars shared by other members, I do not believe I have ever seen a root cellar.