Reddit reviews Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables

I always wanted to build one and went so far as to buy a book on the subject. Look out world! In the ensuing 22 years I've made no measurable progress.

If you move the decimal over. This is about 1,000 in books...

(If I had to pick a few for 100 bucks: encyclopedia of country living, survival medicine, wilderness medicine, ball preservation, art of fermentation, a few mushroom and foraging books.)


Medical:

Where there is no doctor

Where there is no dentist

Emergency War Surgery

The survival medicine handbook

Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine

Special Operations Medical Handbook

Food Production

Mini Farming

encyclopedia of country living

square foot gardening

Seed Saving

Storey’s Raising Rabbits

Meat Rabbits

Aquaponics Gardening: Step By Step

Storey’s Chicken Book

Storey Dairy Goat

Storey Meat Goat

Storey Ducks

Storey’s Bees

Beekeepers Bible

bio-integrated farm

soil and water engineering

Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation

Food Preservation and Cooking

Steve Rinella’s Large Game Processing

Steve Rinella’s Small Game

Ball Home Preservation

Charcuterie

Root Cellaring

Art of Natural Cheesemaking

Mastering Artesian Cheese Making

American Farmstead Cheesemaking

Joe Beef: Surviving Apocalypse

Wild Fermentation

Art of Fermentation

Nose to Tail

Artisan Sourdough

Designing Great Beers

The Joy of Home Distilling

Foraging

Southeast Foraging

Boletes

Mushrooms of Carolinas

Mushrooms of Southeastern United States

Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast


Tech

farm and workshop Welding

ultimate guide: plumbing

ultimate guide: wiring

ultimate guide: home repair

off grid solar

Woodworking

Timberframe Construction

Basic Lathework

How to Run A Lathe

Backyard Foundry

Sand Casting

Practical Casting

The Complete Metalsmith

Gears and Cutting Gears

Hardening Tempering and Heat Treatment

Machinery’s Handbook

How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic

Electronics For Inventors

Basic Science


Chemistry

Organic Chem

Understanding Basic Chemistry Through Problem Solving

Ham Radio

AARL Antenna Book

General Class Manual

Tech Class Manual


MISC

Ray Mears Essential Bushcraft

Contact!

Nuclear War Survival Skills

The Knowledge: How to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of a cataclysm

Check out Eliot Coleman's books on winter gardening, particularly this one. He runs a market garden in Maine, and successfully grows and markets vegetables in the winter. I don't have a cold greenhouse yet, but I'm planning one.

If you grow a lot of veggies in the summer, you can do a lot of preserving in the fall to get you through. Beans are easy to dry. I have this book and have built a root cellar. And I've purchased a pressure canner and preserve all sorts of stuff.

Here are two books I consider essential references, both of which I would recommend to anyone:

Seed to Seed

Root cellaring

You need to preserve your seeds, and you need to preserve your harvests. Both are superb references for their respective topics.

I really love this book. It has dozens of descriptions of how to make different food cellars and how to regulate temperatures. It also describes how to winterize vegetables so you can harvest them all winter long.

https://www.amazon.com/Root-Cellaring-Natural-Storage-Vegetables/dp/0882667033/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=P44TJA94BRG89W40RSE2

I really want to convert a room in the basement into an insulated climate controlled room. It would be worth at least a trip to the library.

I also have The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition. It isn't the best at actual recipes, it just tends to rattle off a list of indigenous fermented foods. Wild Fermentation is much easier to follow.

Depends on what you want to store in them. Most vegetables have different humidity levels that they do better at. Same with temperature. In general though you want them more humid then the average house. You also have to keep various veg separate due to off gassing. Potatoes and apples will spoil really fast if kept near each other.

Mine is basically a tiny room in the corner of my basement. I Insulted the walls really well added poly to keep the moisture in and then vented it to the outside with a bathroom fan to quickly move the air out. I switch it on at night to cool things down if it's too warm. A few bucks in a temperature differential switch would automate it cooling down.

In the winter It never gets below 0C at the bottom although the outside air is rarely below -5C. The majority the time from october to it's between 3C and 10C. so I keep my beer in there and it's cold enough. The veg goes on shelves and moisture is added from dollar store aluminum pans filled with water. Most veg lasts from sept to march without serious issues. In the summer it's too warm.

here's the book to read if your interested.
http://www.amazon.com/Root-Cellaring-Natural-Storage-Vegetables/dp/0882667033/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406350163&sr=8-1&keywords=root+cellaring

Agreed on NOT doing that! Wasted money and time ALL around only to die! Putting it above ground as suggested will only make you have to insulate it with cob or some other material, adding even more bullshit to deal with.

I would suggest cob IF you did above ground, but the layer you would need to insulate it would negate any benefit of having a steel skeleton (shipping container).

Heres a good book on root cellars that I stand by