Growing Root Crops and Store most of them for Free in a Root Cellar

Down-to-earth storage

It’s easy to keep root crops from the fall garden for months in your root cellar. Keep these points in mind:

Your late crop should be as late as possible. The later you can harvest and store them, the longer they’ll keep.

Pull or dig your storage crop after 2 or 3 days of dry weather. Leave the crop out in the sun for an hour. The vegetables will dry quickly and the soil on them will fall off easily.

Don’t wash or brush the vegetables. As soon as you dig them, “top” them right in the garden, but don’t cut the tail roots of your carrots or beets. Leave about an inch of stem on beets so they don’t bleed. Cut the tops close on other root crops. Wash the roots when you’re going to use them, not before.

If you bruise or break any root crops, use them first in the kitchen.

I put root crops in big plastic trash bags, punch a few holes in them, tie up the tops, and store the bags in a cold area of the root cellar.

A cardboard root cellar

If you have no root cellar, you can store some root crops in a cardboard box—even if you live in an apartment. I pack some carrots in a box each year and store it in my root cellar, but any cool room will work.

You need some damp peat moss or sawdust and a large, sturdy cardboard or wooden box.

Dig the carrots (or other root crops) you want to store. Don’t wash them. Clip the tops close and let them dry for an hour in the sun. Line the bottom of the box with a 4-inch layer of peat or sawdust. (My father used sand, but the carrots often tasted a little sandy.) Put in a layer of carrots. The carrots can touch, but keep them 3 or 4 inches from the sides of the box. Cover the carrots with 1/2 inch of peat moss. Alternate carrots and peat moss to within 5 inches of the top. The idea is to insulate the roots so they’ll stay at an even temperature. Top the box off with a layer of peat moss.

Keep the box in a fairly cold area. A garage, basement, back porch, even an unheated room is fine.

Overwinter root crops right in the garden

If I lived in the South, I’d store root crops in the ground through the winter. It’s an easy way to extend the harvest. But it’s a lot easier to get to them there during the winter than up here in Vermont, where 2 feet of snow may cover the garden. It’s easy for me then to talk myself out of using outdoor vegetables.

If your soil freezes, insulate the ground around your roots so they won’t go through a freezing and thawing cycle. Put at least 12 to 18 inches of mulch over the row. Use whatever you have—hay, straw or leaves. Mark row boundaries with stakes. It makes finding the vegetables much easier. Extend the mulch out from both sides of the row at least 12 or 18 inches. In the winter move the mulch aside and dig up some fresh vegetables.

Vegetables stored in the ground don’t have much keeping power once you dig them, so be sure to eat them in a day or two.

Side step root maggots

Small white maggots are the toughest pests of root crops. It’s frustrating because often you don’t know they are digging into your crops until you harvest them. They bother radishes, rutabagas, turnips, and parsnips more than beets or carrots.

Root maggots (technically known as “cabbage maggots“) appear when the weather warms up in late spring. (I like to plant early so I’ll harvest radishes and turnips before any damage is done.) Small flies emerge from the soil and lay eggs around the base of plant stems and in the soil of the row. The maggots hatch from these eggs and work their way into the soil where they start eating the roots and stems. If your root crops have tiny tunnels in them, you have a root maggot problem.

I’ve had good luck with very early crops. The radishes I grow under plastic tunnels have been free of root maggots—perhaps because the flies can’t land near plants under a tunnel.

Stagger your plantings. Put in one row very early in the season and then follow with extra sowings through the season. Although there are several generations of maggots in one season, your crops may reach eating size when there aren’t many maggots in the feeding stage. The most effective control is using a soil insecticide such as diazinon before planting.

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