Secret to successful Root Vegetables Storage: Long Life for Root Crops

If you have a root cellar, keep it cool in the fall when it’s full of produce by opening ventilators on brisk nights and closing them on warm, sunny days. That’s an easy way to keep the temperature and humidity at ideal levels.

Choose to grow thin-necked varieties of onions rather than thick-necked ones, and you’ll have less incidence of onion-neck rot in storage. Cure them in sun for a week or two after harvest, then lay screens in the rafters of your garage or attic and spread the onions one layer thick. Leave them there for a month or so. Make sure onion necks are thoroughly dry before clipping to an inch or two. Store in a cool, dry place with good ventilation.

Here’s one that follows the lazy gardener’s rule: Never do today what may never have to be done. You can dig your carrots in the fall, knock the dirt off them, cut the tops off, let them air for a day or two, bed them down with layers of peat moss, and then dig them out of the peat moss to eat them. Or you can fluff up a foot-deep layer of straw or hay over your wide row or raised bed of carrots, letting that layer reach out beyond the row by a foot.

When a hunger for carrots strikes you, lift up the hay and dig or pull out just the number you want. You’ll find the carrots are crisp and even more flavorful than they were in the fall. But don’t let them just sit there in the spring, or they will spoil.

One last thought: Mark the row with a couple of stakes. It’s surprising how easy it is to lose a whole row of carrots if the snow gets to be a foot or two deep.

If you want those carrots stored in the house, place them in plastic bags with holes cut in them, and keep them in the refrigerator or some other cold — but not freezing — place.

Parsnips, too, can be left to winter over with a covering of hay. Make sure you dig them in spring before the tops begin to sprout. Their sweetness is intensified by cold storage in the ground.

Storing potatoes is hard work, but worth it. Cleaning out rotted potatoes is miserable work, and to be avoided. The secret to successful storage is to keep the potatoes in a cool, well-ventilated area, and to keep the humidity as low as possible, and the potatoes dry.

Fighting Fall Frosts

Kale not only withstands frost, its flavor is improved with each chill. Twist off outer leaves as needed, before they become heavy and tough. Mulch with a foot of loose straw or hay if you’re in a frigid winter climate and continue to harvest all winter.

If you were too lazy to get your plants covered before that early fall frost, don’t write off your crops. Spray with a fine mist early in the morning, before sun hits the leaves, and you may earn a reprieve for your plants. Most damage after frost occurs when leaves warm up too fast in the sunshine. If you can thaw them with cool water first, they may survive.

Crisp Apples

If you pick or buy a lot of apples in the fall, you face a problem: how to keep them fresh for as many weeks as possible. My getting them cold on a brisk fall night, then storing them in inexpensive Styrofoam coolers. Apples tend to dry out when stored in a refrigerator; stored in these coolers, they retain that moisture, and their crisp freshness.

Get a Jump on Spring

A late planting of lettuce can be wintered over. Just cover with a foot or so of loose hay. Do the same with parsley for an early spring supply. It will have a stronger flavor then, but will keep you in fresh parsley until a new planting is ready.

In northern climates, where the ground stays frozen all winter, try a planting of peas in fall, after the ground has frozen. Get a big jump on the next growing season.

When autumn leaves fall, run the rotary mower over them before you rake, to reduce their volume and combat matting and blowing. Use them everywhere — rototill into the vegetable garden, apply lightly around evergreens and shrubs, dig into future tree holes, and add to the compost pile. You can probably even get bagged leaves from your unwise neighbors.

In the fall, take two hours of a Saturday afternoon as time to get ready for spring. If you have a tiller, drain the gasoline from

It, drop a few drops of oil into the cylinder, and even change the oil, so come warm weather, when things are rushing, you’ll be ready to till.

If you won’t have to bother with spring tilling because you mulch year-round, use that same Saturday afternoon to plan and mark the rows for next year’s garden, and you’ll be all ready for spring planting the minute the soil is.

Clean, repair, and sharpen your tools before hanging them up for the last time. Take inventory and jot down requests for Christmas presents to fill your needs.

Winter Protection

Have you shrubs or perennials that are borderline hardy? A New Hampshire gardener placed large rocks to the northwest of his tender heathers on a south-facing bank. In summer, the rocks add a pleasing design element to the garden. In winter, they absorb the sun’s heat in the day and retain some of that heat at night. They also protect the plants from chill northwest winds.

Put bales of hay around tender plants to protect them in winter.

Strawberry plants need winter protection. Save weeding headaches next season by using a weed-free winter mulch, such as pine needles. You can give the plants a dusting of mulch after the first few light frosts, but wait until the temperature drops to 20°F before applying it to a depth of three or four inches. By this time, plants will have hardened off. Remove mulch in the spring, but keep it in the alleys between the plants to do double duty as weed-smotherer and as a handy covering for blossoms when a late frost threatens.

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