How Do You Store All Your Vegetables?

   After all the time and money spent to plant, tend and grow a garden, you probably are faced at some point with having too many fresh vegatables or fruits and not enough time to eat it all! Not to mention that it takes a good bit of time to preserve everything for use at a later date. People have been faced with this problem for as long as they have been growing fruits and vegetables for their own benefit to eat. So what should you do with your abundant garden haul?
   Long ago, people learned some additional storage methods without the use of electricity. Diet of Life offers the following advice to solve this problem:

"Actually, food that has been kept in the freezer and the refrigerator longer than three months does not preserve its flavor and it nutritional quality significantly decreases. 

And what do we do when there is a power failure that lasts longer than a day or two? We have to dispose of all the food that we have stored in the refrigerator.

The whole issue becomes even more painful if we have invested funds, effort and love to grow and harvest our own crops.

In winter, one method of preserving crops is by drying, canning and pickling. The question is how we can keep our supply of fresh crops for a longer period of time.

Even though our ancestors did not have the advantage of using modern technology, they had the solution to this problem.  

Vegetables can be stored in the garden

Some crops do not need to be stored at all. You only need to keep them in the ground and dig them during winter time and use them to your convenience!

This method has been used for 40 000 years, according to some records!

Jerusalem artichokes, collards, kale, Brussels sprouts, salsify and parsnips endure cold weather and can be preserved in the ground throughout the winter, except in regions where the climate is most severe.

You can even leave salsify, kale and parsnips to freeze in the ground, in which case it is necessary to protect them by covering them with 2 – 6 inches of straw. To protect the crops from rains in late fall and winter, use plastic to cover the beds. 

You can store crops in a basement or in a root cellar

A root cellar is any room built underground used for storage. It can be a part of the basement or it can be independently built outside of the house. The common feature of these storage places is that they provide cool temperature, a high level of humidity and proper ventilation.

Most houses have a basement. If it is not provided with a heating system, the basement is likely to stay cool during the winter months."

   Read the full article: Here Is How You Can Store Vegetables For Months Without A Refrigerator

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