DIY Cold Storage and Frugal Root Cellar Ideas

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Are you looking for a place to store all of your winter produce but your home is not equipped with the perfect root cellar? Here’s how to create DIY Cold Storage no matter what type of home you live in!

Are you looking for a place to store all of your winter produce but your home is not equipped with the perfect root cellar? Here's how to create DIY Cold Storage no matter what type of home you live in! #rootcellar #coldstorage #frugalliving #seasonalliving

Frugal Cold Storage can be just about anything from a corner of your basement to a fully equipped root cellar. Cold storage is a place that is not your refrigerator that you use to store produce, usually in the winter months. Having cold storage is an excellent way to have food security during the months when fresh produce is more difficult to come by.

DIY Cold Storage

As much as I love canning I also love having fresh produce in the winter. Up here in the north, it’s hard to come by, at least for a fair price! That’s why when I grow things in my garden or when I’m able to find produce and other bargains at a lower price, I need my own root cellar or frugal cold storage area to keep it fresh as long as possible.

That’s where cold storage comes in.

Do you picture an underground room with dirt walls and veggies hanging from the ceiling?

I did too, at first.

Or maybe even something a little more modern like my grandma’s cold storage room in her basement. Concrete walls and shelves lined with canned goods. Yes, we’ve been lucky enough to have that too once. But if an entire cold storage room isn’t an option for you, you probably still want the storage options while making do with what you have.

And let me tell you, what I started with was an icky wet crawlspace. When I first started thinking about building some cold storage into our first home I turned to the crawlspace. But no matter how many trenches we dug around the house, how many fans we stick down there, or how many times we have to sub-pump it out, it’s always kinda icky, too wet, and not very reliable.

After I crossed the crawlspace off my checklist I researched some other methods of cold storage. Here are some ideas on how I’ve set up a DIY cold storage in the homes that we’ve lived in over the years. Maybe one of them will provide you with some inspiration on how you also can have cold storage in your home.

Very Basic Cold Storage

House Mudroom

Our first home was a foreclosure and before we bought it and while it sat empty someone broke into the door pictured above. It was a mess and cold air blew in right into the living room. I don’t believe you can live in rural South Dakota (at least not well!) and not have an entryway so I suggested that we turn this hallway into one. This room has no heating vents and is completely blocked from the rest of the house so it stays cooler (or hotter in the summer). It make a great little mudroom.

Entryway closet

It also made a great bulk storage area. Here you can see my buckets with Gamma lids that I use for bulk products in my whole foods stockpile such as rice, flours, beans, grains, ect. The other half of the closet was for coats.

Entryway cold storage

Here is a picture of the whole little room. Do you see my cold storage?

Food in crocks

I didn’t have much yet at the time I took this picture, only some potatoes and winter squash but my next co-op order brought apples and bulk onions that also shared the area. Once I added more produce I put a small wire shelf right here so I could stack the produce better and not take up any more room in the entryway.

For a while, I stored my produce in simple old crocks. I bought these for around $5 each at antique stores. These are not the fancy Red Wing crocks, they are simple, no design, no brand crocks that usually have cracks or chips. They worked great for storage. You don’t need to use crocks if you don’t have them or don’t have access to them. You can use 5 gallon buckets, old ice cream pails, or anything else that will hold food, depending on what you are storing.

If you are like me and need to put something in cold storage now, without having a special basement area, this option will give you decent storage until you have time to build something better. (Because you might not want to store your pantyhose onions in your entryway!)

But who knows, maybe this will even work for you all winter long!

Basement Cold Storage

DIY Cold Storage

In another home we lived in, I actually had that amazing concrete room that was just perfect to create DIY cold storage. We built bins and shelves to store all of the produce in single layers. It was glorious!

This area was in an unfinished basement and it worked wonderful for storing produce and canned goods. Even though it was a little warmer than what you would want typical cold storage to be, I was able to store all kinds of produce in this room including winter squash for many months before it would start to go bad. We easily could store veggies up until January or February.

Root Cellar Cold Storage

Root Cellar in the Snow

Now my cold storage looks a little different. After almost 15 years of married life we finally decided to take the plunge and build a true root cellar on our homestead. You can read all about this project here.

Worried about a pest problem? Read my article on How to Keep Pests Out of Food Storage. And for all things cold storage, I highly recommend the book Root Cellaring.

Div Line

Uses for Squash Seeds

Foods to Put in Cold Storage

Each year, I get busy lately putting up fresh produce for our winter stockpile. There are many winters that I can get to January without having to pay full grocery store out-of-season price.

This is where cold storage comes in. We can stock up on bulk and cheap in-season and end-of-season produce and store it where we will be able to enjoy it for many months to come. In the rest of this article, I’m going to be talking about various produce and how long it will last in your cold storage. I’ll also share how it’s best to keep it, and what varieties you should look for to last the longest.

Cold storage isn’t a place for things like bananas and avocados that ripen quickly and should really be stored on your counter. But there are many things that you can store in your DIY cold storage space that can last all winter long!

–Find more Ways to Make Produce Last Longer here.

Apples

Apples will last from 2 to 7 months in cold storage depending on what variety you choose. It’s best if apples are individually wrapped in newspaper, although you can also just store in a cardboard box or wooden crate. Tart apples will keep longer and better than sweet varieties so look for Fuiji, Pink Lady, Cameo, or Honey Crisp.

–Here’s how to make Apple Syrup with apple peelings!

Carrots

Carrots are always a great item to keep in your cold storage as they can last all winter long (even if they grow a bit of hair!). The best way to store them is in damp sand in a box, but I’ve found that they still last a long time just on the shelf with everything else.

–Make your carrots into dessert with this.Simple and Easy Carrot Cake Recipe.

Pears

Pears will last 2 to 3 months if properly stored. Wrap individual pears in newspaper and ensure they stay stored around 30 degrees. Look for Bosc and D’Anjou.

–Click here for a simple Pear Tart Recipe.

Potatoes

Potatoes will last for 4 to 6 months. They shouldn’t be stored near apples or any other ethylene-releasing produce. Look for Kennebec or Yukon gold.

Old Fashioned Scalloped Potatoes in the slow cooker.

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet Potatoes should be stored similar to potatoes and will last 4 to 6 months when stored properly. Look for Centennial and Jewell varieties.

–Need a meal idea? Here’s a Chicken, Beans, and Sweet Potatoes Sheet Pan Supper.

Onions

Onions should be dry on the outside before they are stored. They will last for 5 to 8 months. You can wrap these with newspaper or use the Pantyhose Onion Storage method. Onions should be stored in a very dry environment and should be allowed to breath in what they are stored in (no plastic). Look for Stuttgarter, Brunswick, Yellow Glove, or Red Burgandy. (No sweet varieties.)

–We like to use fresh onions in Homemade Taverns!

Pumpkins

Pumpkins will last for 5 to 6 months when stored with a small portion or their stem still on. Winter Luxury is a good variety to look for.

–Here are 11 Ways to Use Pumpkin Seeds.

Celery

Celery will store for a few months if kept in a nice cool temp. It’s always a good veggie to have in your cold storage because it’s used for so many soups and stews in the winter!

–One of our favorite winter soups is this Bean with Bacon Soup Recipe.

Squash

Winter Squash will last for 4 to 6 months in cold storage. Look for Delicata, Hubbard, and Butternut varieties. Do not clean the squash before storing.

–Learn How to Cook Winter Squash.

These are really just basic winter storage produce varieties but if you are new to cold storage, these are a good place to start. Once you get the hang of it and get a great system set up you can also learn to store other produce such as radishes, rutabagas, turnips, and more.


Other Foods to Store in Your Cold Storage

If your cold storage gets no lower than 50 degrees, you could also store your home canned goods in there as well. Your jams, preserves, canned tomatoes, soup, and all of those good jars!

You could also store excess dry goods in cold storage as well as long as you know it’s a place that rodents can’t get into! Pasta, legumes, bulk spices, extra grains, etc.

One more note…don’t be afraid to try and store other things in your cold storage besides what is listed here. This past winter we stored pineapples for over 2 months without them getting overripe and we’ve stored things like cabbage and citrus as well!

For all things cold storage, I highly recommend the book Root Cellaring. It contains so many different ideas on how to have proper cold storage and it makes it so easy to look up the produce that you are trying to store and find out what to do with it.


More DIY Cold Storage Ideas

Food Bins with Food

Here was a picture of our final cold storage in our first home. It consisted of a simple wire shelf unit and old crocks. I left the apples in apple boxes with layers of paper between them. Sorry for the sideways pic…not sure why it insists on being that way!

Pantry Storage

I have a room set up in the most underground part of my basement. It stays cool in here year-round. – Carlye Ann H. (Little House Living Reader)

Under the Stairs Storage

Here’s where I store my canned goods in our basement! Potatoes and onions are stored in another room further under the house. – Hannah M. (Little House Living Reader)

Basement Pantry

I have a cold room built into my basement. It stays about 5C all year. It’s about 8ftx12ft, with shelves built on the wall and a standing rack in the middle. Storing my potatoes in there for the first time. – Kristina G. (Little House Living Reader)

Root Cellar in the Ground

Our root cellar here in the Smokies. – Judith H. (Little House Living Reader)

 

Do you do cold storage? What are your methods?

Merissa Bio

This blog post on DIY Cold Storage was originally published on Little House Living in October 2010. It has been updated with new information in July 2022.

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78 Comments

    1. Most of the light in mine is blocked because of the position of the door, but yes, if your entryway gets a lot of light it might not be the best place.

  1. Great idea, our basement is dark and dirty, but it stays around 30-40 degrees in the winter. I’ll have to try this for all our potatoes we’re about to dig up.

  2. I am going to wrap some apples in paper, put them in some Styrofoam coolers we have collected and keep them in my workout room. It stays pretty cool in there in the winter, so I’m hoping that will preserve the apples for at least awhile.

    1. My dad took our old refrigerator, put it in the basement next to his workroom, wove clothesline between the shelves and used it for apple storage (and beer on the other shelves ;)). He really liked apples.

  3. I’ve been trying to figure out a good cold storage area that doesn’t freeze in our cold Montana winters. We have a crawlspace similar to yours so that’s not an option! Right now things are in boxes and buckets in the garage but it is not insulated well enough and we don’t constantly heat it so it will likely freeze in there when we get a really cold spell-but it will work for a little while!

  4. Hub decided two years ago to build his/our own root cellar. Things were going great and very inexpensively until he got in a hurry to cut pegs for the lid molds — he zipped right through his right index finger, cutting it almost completely off to the first knuckle. Ended up having the rest of it taken off. We now have a $15k root cellar. 😉

  5. We have no room in my house either. But one thing we do have is a big well house. So that’s where we store potatoes and even canned goods(I build shelves). The temps stay around 40 degrees all year round so its works pretty good for us.

  6. We have a similar place – an entry that isn’t as cold as outside, but not heated either. But what about when it gets really cold here in ND? We have it for cold storage now, but the temps have already gone below freezing a couple of times. Will this make things rot?

    1. It depends on how low it goes. Temps down to 30 degrees are ok, anything lower than that and you may want to try and find a way to heat it up just a bit.

  7. this is awesome! we live in coastal texas, so our winters are completely eratic, mornings are freezing but by afternoons it could be 60-65 degrees. argh! i’ve been trying to think of an inexpensive way for cold storage. i know that we would have to build something and refrigerate it. that is where i know the cost will come in is that refrigeration as hubby saves everything so the materials cost for building would be minimal. any ideas on that? any help would be great. i’ve even thot about seeing if we could solar panel it for the electricity for just that building. mother earth news had a great article on low cost DIY solar panels last issue.

    1. I haven’t tried anything like this before but I think it could work great, especially with a home-built or low cost solar panel to power it. Let us know if you end up doing it!

  8. I’ve heard that you shouldn’t store apples with the rest of your produce (especially the potatoes). Apparently the apples produce a gas when they ripen that will make other fruits and veggies spoil faster.

    I’m not exactly sure about this, but you might want to look into it before you have a mudroom full of rotten veggies welcoming people to your house.

    1. As far as I know they have to be in very close proximity or in the same bucket. I will however, be storing mine elsewhere anyways since they won’t fit in this little spot:) A good thing to think about!

    2. I have heard this as well. But, then I heard, to keep potatoes from forming eyes too quick, put in an apple. It’s games are actually used to keep these lasting longer. I have now tried it and it works.

      I have no way to have a cold storage outside. No hill to put it into. I put my potatoes on single layer in a shallow cardboard box, sitting on a plastic, in my hall bathroom. The bathroom rarely gets used, it’s dark and cool. But, I will need more room soon for sweet potatoes coming. I do not know what I’m going to do.

  9. I tried to do this last year in my garage (the only place that’s feasible right now). I put potatoes, onions, carrots and beets layered in a box with paper in between. I live on the coast so it is very damp here. My veggies all went soft in a very short time and then rotted. What do you suggest I do different?

    Cheer,
    Chris

  10. Lol, we store our pumpkins and squashes in our bedroom as it’s the coldest room in the house….so romantic!

  11. @ Chris,

    Have you tried storing your root vegetables in buckets of sand in your garage? I used to live on an island in the British Channel where it can get quite damp and I used to store my carrots in buckets of sand.

  12. What a great idea! Why didn’t I think of this???? Our basement is too warm to store produce well, and the little room under the front steps is too damp. We have an unheated entryway with coat closet on one side and a “chest” with a lift up lid on the other. We have always used them to store coats and winter accessories (which makes sense of course) but we don’t use the front door much so it’s really just badly used storage. Now I know a better use. The spare coats and accessories can be packed away. Is it a bit strange? Maybe. But that’s okay. Thanks for the great idea!

  13. Has anyone tried trenching potatoes (I don’t like the idea of having to dig up in winter) or burying metal garbage cans? My mother says when she was a child, people (this was in Wyoming) would bury old cast iron tubs in the backyard, and use that for cold storage, with a wood top for a lid.

    1. My grandparents did this in Pa. I believe Mu grandfather put a piece of plywood across it and the pieces of woo on top of that !

  14. we really dont have a single room in our house that will work (not even in our damp basement) we are wondering and trying to figure out if there is a way to build a storage “closet” or box in our non insulated garage but we live in MN where it gets really cold in the winter and I am afraid that the produce would freeze – any suggestions? thanks

  15. Well…no. We live in the south where we have no basements and usually have 60+ degree days throughout the winter, only occasionally getting colder and then accompanied by rain. So my choices are refrigerator or freezer. Even air drying can be a challenge due to high humidity.

    1. I’m in CA and have the same problems.
      No basements, no room, always warm, although less humidity than you, I’m sure.
      And I live in an apartment so I dont have a yard that I can dig holes in to put trash cans in to fill with food.

      Does anyone have suggestions for us hot weather, no space people??

      1. I bought a Harvest Right freeze dryer, and freeze dry my food. I store in my clothes closet. I prefer food over clothes, also under my beds.

      2. same here in Kansas!! very hot summers. freezing cold in winter & only room have to do something with is the laundry room. It does not have concrete walls or anything, except the floor which has huge crack in it. That means everything we have back there can go from cold to HUMID & HOT which i tried to tell my boyfriend that it wasn’t good to be doing that, so NOW IM looking for a way to turn it into a cool room for root cellar like room myself.

    2. Same here. I live in Florida. It’s never cold. I have always wanted to live somewhere cooler and where I could have a basement.

  16. Our dishwasher succumbed to the fate of all things, and after pulling it out and replacing the hardwood floor that it ruined, we buried it in the side of an earthen mound, upright, just as if installing it under a counter. I will plant a dense groundcover around the door to stabilize the soil there when it gets warmer. But the pull-out racks make it very convenient to store root vegetables, and with its thick layer of insulation, originally designed to keep it quiet, it should keep root veggies very nicely.

  17. Joan and Melissa (Hey! Haha!) are right. Bury your food in a container beneath the frost line like our foremothers did. I saw Richard Proenneke do this on the PBS documentary Alone In the Wilderness

    1. Wow! Great documentary recommendation. We watch a lot of PBS shows, but this is not one we’ve run across. Amazing!

  18. Merissa, do you remember the monumental ND winter chronicaled in the “The Long Winter”? First thing that crossed my mind when reading about that storm y’all just had. Started early, then one after another. So sad reading of all the cattle lost up there…many families not yet recovered from the drought. Hope you are stocking up fast, just in case. Best wishes in your new place!!

  19. Thought I would add a thought about the cold storage. If you have some old
    clay pots, preferable large, and put sand instide the bigger one,then nestled the other clay pot down in & put veggies in it; it creates kind of a mini like frig. Something with the damp sand evaporating & making it cooler. Read it a while ago & have been doing this for a few veggies in my hubbies old shop out back.Thanks Enjoy your articles & hope to head up that way one day. Have a friend in Montana I need to see sooooooo, road trip. LOL Liz

  20. We have a sunroom on the south side of our house off our kitchen and I generally use it for cold storage all winter…it is usually about 20 degrees warmer in there than it is outside so I do monitor the outdoor temp and if it goes below 10 degrees I haul all the plants and anything else that is out there into the kitchen for the night. I have a ceiling fan that goes 24/7 and in the winter I have one of those radiator heaters that I put right under the fan to circulate the warmer air around the plants that are out there. The plants all get the bright light and anything else that is stored there goes behind the tables and is covered up. Even in the winter on a very sunny day that room can get to 80+ degrees during the day but about 4 PM it starts to get really cold in there again. Some days it is 85 in the sunroom, 80 in the kitchen with the sunroom door open and 72 in the living room on the north side of the house and it seems really cold in there and it’s not. I also have an old fridge in the basement that I use to store some stuff in too…..it is really cold and I have to make sure things don’t touch the back of the fridge or it will freeze .

  21. When I was a kid we didn’t have a basement and my Daddy always dug a big hole in the garden and lined it with straw and put our potatoes and turnips in it. Layered it with more straw and mounded it up with dirt. When Mommy needed Veggies, Daddy would go out with the pitch fork and dig her out some and cover it back over real deep.We did this every year as long as I can remember.

    1. Donna,
      My family continues that method today & we’ve no problems with any of it rotting, freezing, etc. Also, cabbage with winter squash are just as easy to “hole up.” Although this is July 24th, 2015 this method is already discussed & resolved in our household as with the rest of our family. You know, What is old is new again. Love it.

  22. I live in GA (Atlanta area). We’re at 53 degrees right now, and I don’t recall it being this cool in late October. About the only place I can think of to do cold storage is our covered back deck, and anything I would put out there would have to be well protected against squirrels, possums, and other night animals. (While there’s a top cover on the deck, it’s open on the sides.) Is it possible to do cold storage in GA or is this only for people who live up north?

    1. You should be able to you will just need to monitor the temps/humidity a little more carefully. It might work best for you to bury your food. (If possible)

  23. I like the crocks very much…country-chic? 🙂 my parents have a swimming pool and buy chlorine tabs by the 5-8 gal bucket full in the summer. I snag one or two (cleaned several times of course) every time I visit to dump apples and potatoes in. I did learn to make sure you rotate your veggies or fruit periodically for good air flow! I’m gonna try the squash! Ps… These huge buckets are also good for composting and potting soil…they come with lids! Double win 🙂

  24. I had the same aha! moment and started using our laundry room, which is an addition also with no heat or cooling. I keep potatoes, onions and winter squash in there. We live in the south so our winters can still have high temps, so I have to watch them, but overall it works really great!

  25. We have a stone cold room attached to our living room. It stays way below 50 even in the heat of summer but in winter it does fall below freezing.

    Ive been looking into canning and fresh cold storage and was wondering if the room dropping below freezing would be a problem for fresh apples, pears, squash and also for canned goods?

  26. This might be old-fashioned, but here in Kansas we would find a top loading washing machine on the curb or at the dump and take out the motor. We would bury it outside the kitchen door. We kept an old broom near the space. When we needed veggies or apples we would brush off the washer lid and open to get what we needed.

    1. Hey Tracy I’m in missouri. And worried about the humidity. We were wanting to do something similar. So I was wondering did it rust or the veggies go bad quickly?

  27. Thanks for posting this on FB, I live in AR and every year we have tried to store they have all rotted.. We have a sunroom that is unheated/cooled and in Sept/Oct the temperatures fluctuate way to much and the squash (acorn, spaghetti and butternut) went bad.. So this last year I put them in the produce bin in our refrigerator.. Had them there a month and they went bad…. Just not sure what to try next….. 🙁

    1. Have u tried a burlap cloth bag with wood hips inverter each item keep closed and not touch as u add more add more saw dust

  28. We have a “cellar” built into the side of a hill. The roof is covered with soil and grass grows on it. The door has thick polystyrene in it to insulate the space. This works very well in winter (we have frosts but it doesn’t often snow here). In summer when the weather gets hot, it’s always a cool space. We live in the Nelson area in New Zealand.

  29. Started canning for the first time this year, and would love to do cold storage, just not sure what our best option would be just yet. We have a basement, but it has a lot of leaks and wet areas so I’m unsure if I want fresh produce down there. (I only use it for laundry and some seasonal storage up off the ground.)

    Currently our canning has taken over one of our store cupboards in the kitchen, with the pantry housing the canning equipment. I may try and use the pantry for cold storage as it is an interior wall and seems to do well in the short term for potatoes, apples, and onions.

  30. We have used styrofoam boards to block off a 5’x3’x3′ area (think like a chest freezer) near the air intake in our attached garage. It stays between 30-50. If it gets too cold (we live in Alaska), then we pull open one of the sides of styrofoam to get a bit more of the warmer garage air in. It fits our pumpkins, potatoes, carrots and apples, and some onions. It’s very tightly packed right now because everything just went in, but it will open up in a month or two.

  31. I just read about cold storage. I live in S.C. my house is on an incline so in the back I can stand up under the house. It seems dry. But what temperature should it be around? I don’t have any place in the house.

    1. There can be many different *ideal* temps depending on what you want to store but I just try and keep mine around 37-40F degrees (about the same as a fridge) if I’m sotring many types of produce.

  32. We have kept a pumpkin on our kitchen table for over 15 months! (We wrote the date on the bottom). The secret? Bleach. We bleach-washed the outside of the pumpkin, let it air dry, then sat it on the table. People thought it was fake until they picked it up!

  33. We have an old upright freezer that died a couple of years ago and has just been sitting in a shed. I wanted to bury it and use it as a root cellar, but I’m not sure how one deals with the snow on top… seems like a lot of work to shovel it off to get a few carrots for dinner, lol.

  34. Well the apple thing is interesting. My mom taught me to put an apple in with my potatoes to keep them from sprouting as quickly and I have found that it works…been doing it for years. I don’t have a farm, and my potatoes and apples come from the store or farmers markets. So I’m confused when you say that apples cause them to spoil more quickly.
    I was also taught to store onions away from potatoes for the same reason.
    What’s the scoop?

  35. Hello! I love this idea and want to put it into practice, but I live in Southern California. Any suggestions? No cellars, basements, etc. attic is warm most of the time. Thank you.

  36. I’m in CA and have the same problems.
    No basements, no room, always warm, although less humidity than you, I’m sure.
    And I live in an apartment so I dont have a yard that I can dig holes in to put trash cans in to fill with food.

    Does anyone have suggestions for us hot weather, no space people??

  37. I live in SE Arizona. I have no place that is cool. I can’t dig in our ground as it is all rock so can’t build anything underground. Have any ideas for storing food for the winter in a situation like this?

  38. What are the green veggies in your wheelbarrow? Zucchini or pumpkin. If pumpkin how do you prepare them. I have a number of pumpkin that I will be dehydrating for bread, etc.

    1. The large green things in the wagon were zucchini but for pumpkin I like to just leave them in cold storage until I need to use them. I “cure” them for 2 weeks in a warm, covered place and then put them in my cold storage area. They will store for months.

  39. Do you have any ideas for those of us in warmer climates? I live in a very warm part of Texas..no option for a root cellar or basement

  40. Can you tell me why I would put cream of tarter in Crabapple juice or Crabapple Jelly? I can’t even find an answer on google?

    Thanks for your help!

  41. I am very interested storing home grown root crops or root cellaring but I am fearful of attracting rodents. How do people keep mice out of what they are storing whether it be in the ground or I root cellar, or a cold room? Thank you for your help!

  42. We live in a hot tropical climate and utilize a/c year round in our home. The “first”room that receives the cool air from our air handler vent duct is the guest room. Coolest room in the house. We utilize part of that wall to wall closet for cool storage.

  43. I love your root cellar, especially with the snow on it. I wish I could build something like that in a subdivision but I can’t. I can, make jams, and dehydrate, that is enough for me. I love all things that u do.

    The Lord will richly bless u for all u teach to us and others. Keep up the good work.

    I was wondering why your heading comes differently. It went into my junk mail and I had to find it. I think I missed a few newsletters.

    Your Canadian friend Darlene Driedger. God richly bless u Melissa !!

  44. Hello
    I’m very eager to learn about safe cold room food storage . I have a concrete basement cold room with shelves. What foods are best to store and the best way to keep them either in containers or laid out.

  45. We live in the Pacific NW, in the first bay of the shop, we built a “larder” it is 12 ft x 14 ft. with 1 ft of insulated walls, floor and ceiling. It stays 45F. We built slat shelves and wood boxes on casters for the onions and potatoes. We also store our bottled vinegars in there. The apples are in a 18 cu ft refrigerator, when the apples are gone, it gets unplugged until the next harvest.
    We are still eating squash, onions and potatoes from last season.

  46. We just moved back to Michigan from South Carolina and bought a cute mid century modern 1950 home. We have a basement now. We discovered a what I thought was a closet but it’s set up like a cold storage with shelves. We stored potatoes for 5 months in plastic totes. I purchased a thick plastic sheeting,like on the doors of a cooler for the doorway to keep it cooler in the summer. The old ways win again.