If you have a basement or even room under your house, you can create a root cellar to store food! The trick is going to be making it work with what you have, and all of us are in different situations when it comes to our home setup.

Technically, a root cellar is any storage location that uses the natural cooling, insulating, and humidifying properties of the earth to store food. Whether you stock a root cellar with your own homegrown produce or the bounty from local farmers’ market, it’s a time-tested storage method and could come in handy if we lose power for a long period of time.

Before we had refrigeration (a refrigerator in our homes), an underground root cellar was an essential and effective way to store carrots, turnips, beets, parsnips, potatoes, onions, and other root vegetables that were grown in our gardens. Today, root cellars have made a comeback to keep food from freezing during the winter and keep food cool during the summer to prevent spoilage. A root cellar is also the perfect place to store jars of canned or pickled vegetables, canned meats, and the bulbs or rhizomes of perennial flowers as well. A secondary use for the root cellar is as a place to store wine, beer, or other homemade alcoholic beverages.  You could also store any alcohol you intend to use for bartering or first aid during a SHTF situation in your root cellar.

How To Start Your Root Cellar

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