Root Cellaring - Book Review

I discovered the book Root Cellaring when I was looking for a way to store root vegetables from my garden over the winter.

After reading this book, I initially constructed a very small root cellar in my basement. This worked out quite well except, since the floor was concrete, it took a bit of effort to keep the humidity as high as is necessary.

A couple of years ago, I decided to build a larger root cellar to give me more storage room. Also, it would have a dirt floor, so the natural moisture in the earth would keep the humidity at the required level - something that was made difficult by the concrete floor of the smaller root cellar.

Again Root Cellaring came to my rescue with lots of great ideas for planning and constructing the root cellar.

Until I read this book, I never imagined that I would find a way to have an actual underground root cellar, nor was I even sure that I would find any place to store my vegetables over the winter.

However, some of the ideas the Bubel's have for storing vegetables are quite simple. This gave me a lot of encouragement. And they provide such a wide range of methods!

So, for me, the sections on designing and building root cellars - and other methods of winter food storage - are where the book really shines. That was my thought, at least, until I spent more time reading the other sections.

Then I discovered that the entire book is full of thoughtful and detailed ideas for every step of harvesting and storing vegetables and fruit for the winter.

And it's written by two people who obviously have a lot of hands-on experience doing this and who have talked with - and learned from - many other people who have root cellars.