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.

Anne's point is real, root cellars only make sense where the ground actually gets cold enough. I just leave carrots and parsnips in the ground over winter with a bit of straw on top and they keep fine well into January. Works better than the fridge for texture honestly. But that's only an option if your winters are properly cold.

We can leave roots in the ground all winter here, or potatoes can be put in a clamp, but root cellars are a good idea, because it means I can use the root patch to grow green manures or overwintering crops.

In times when I haven't grown enough food, I've bought in some bulk roots and 'cellared' them in barrels or buckets in a cool place (unheated room, or crawlspace under house) surrounded by dry leaves. Beetroot seems to work the best out of anything for this.

Here's my article about root cellaring without a root cellar: https://thenourishinghearthfire.com/2024/07/01/root-cellaring-without-a-root-cellar-simple-off-grid-food-storage/

Homegrown carrots, unwashed, with soil still attached seem to keep OK in an unheated room for a while. Last time I did this I just needed to clear a patch of ground, and had them in a large stainless steel bowl in the larder, we ate them within a month or so and they still tasted nice and crisp.

Lana Reyes wrote: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.

<redacted>

A proper dug-in cellar is one option.

What's the cheapest root-cellar setup you've seen actually work?

cheep cellar
4 yrs ago helped neighbor with digging a hole, he's 94yrs old
put 55 gallon drum in hole let it stick up about 5"
backfilled with dirt to make a sloped dirt collar around it so you could get lid off easier
he has several burlap sacks with stuff he tosses in there for cold storage.
this is closer to his house than his celar by the creek bank.
not pretty but usefull. same guy has 1950's stove with pilot lights you can adjust individually.
he shuts them all off except one burner. this one he puts a can of soup on in the morning
come lunch time he opens the can for hot lunch.... i shake my head at him regularly with
the stuff he does.

It's a fair question. We had a related conversation a while ago.  https://permies.com/t/273807/cold-cellar-today

I wouldn't take the image posted above too literally. It certainly looks lovely and idyllic on a calendar. Not a serious design though.

In our Northern climate, there are limits to a stand-alone root cellar since the ground freezes solid 6-7' deep in winter. In the earliest houses, they dug a pit with a trap door under the main floor. Better-built century old farmhouses always had a corner of the basement set up as the cold room. Lightly insulated from the rest of the house, and with a sliding door to the outside air to control the temperature. And often, as noted, a sand bed for root vegetables.

Since our winters last six months and harvests are a year apart, it's hard to know how long they were able to keep things. But since I'm here, it seems it was just long enough.

With modern houses and central heating, a root cellar is tougher. I have a dark corner in the basement for potatoes, but it's too warm and the potatoes sprout way too early. With some framing and insulation this year I think it will work better than in the past.

For other root vegetables, we use a refrigerator. With the tubers carefully washed and trimmed of root hairs, moisture-managed with paper towels, and curated so a bad one doesn't rot the whole lot, we are still eating carrots and beets we harvested in 2025 -- a full calendar year ago. Yes there is some cost in electricity, and yes there are plastic bags, but even now the quality is better than the stuff in the supermarket.

Parsnips and carrots in the ground under straw is the way I do it too, and they honestly taste better after a frost. For things that actually need lifting like beetroot and celeriac, I use a wooden crate in an unheated garage packed with slightly damp sand. Keeps them through January without any fuss.

Joao Winckler wrote:Parsnips and carrots in the ground under straw is the way I do it too, and they honestly taste better after a frost.

I know people in milder climates than mine who do this. It would be so much easier than what I have to do.

Douglas, have you tried it?
You can put 3 feet of leaves on the top of a section of your carrot crop.
I'm surprised how thawed the ground is under that big of a pile of leaves.
Granted our ground only freezes to about 4 or 5 feet around here.
The real problem with keeping them in the ground comes from the ground freezing and thawing and the leaves keep the temps pretty steady.

Another problem with keeping them in the ground or using a cold/root cellar can be mice.