Winter vegetable storage

With all that is going on in today's world this year I plan to grow enough veggies to last through winter so I would like to pick some of you old timers brains ..

Potatoes - What the best storage method and for how long

lettuce seems to like cold weather so maybe grow in the basement under LED for winter ?

carrots seems to last forever are no matter how they stored

Green beans is the only way to keep them canning ?

How long will some veggies last if the roots are kept in water like celery ?

Radish ?

Citrus ?

Zucchini seems to last forever

tomatoes don't like canned so pick green ? I always grow more then I eat hate wasting them

Also considering Aquaponics under LED

Whats some of your guys methods and advice ?

Build a root cellar. For some fruits and veggies, you can hell them, which is simply to dig a trench to below the local frost line, line the bottom of the trench with straw, put down a layer of, say, potatoes, layer more straw on top and finish by shoveling back the dirt you had dug out to make the trench. Dig back in to take some out. My father told me about this, and it was done just like that back in the day...if you lacked a root cellar.

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

Potatoes - What the best storage method and for how long

There are two kinds, those that you harvest mid summer, you can not store these too long. Those that you harvest end summer / fall, you clean them up from the rough dirt and put them into a dark vented place.

A clay pot with openings will do, same for onions. For longer storage I know from our farm we put potato, carrot and onions into boxes filled with sand. It keeps the mice away. They can not dig tunnels into the sand and it keeps insects away too. Well but not my daughter lol she will eat the carrots right from the garden.

Citrus is best you harvest them from the tree as you need them. I have two citrus trees in pots around so I can bring them in, in winter.

If you have room for a geodesic dome, you can grow lettuce in winter without LED and heating and have herbs in there too.

a reply to: TDDAgain

Wow never considered sand that's a great idea

a reply to: Lazarus Short

We had a root cellar with clay floor and sandstone walls on our farm, it was always moist and a bit stale air down there but the potato and other goods did not spoil. I do have a premise left where an old ice cellar is located though, that's for refridgerating meat way into the summer. Put ice in there in winter from the little lake nearby and close the door, there will be ice in summer left still.

a reply to: Ravenwatcher
The place where the farm house was, it has been pulled around a year ago by the new owners was over 200 years old and located on a hill where clay and sand separates. So plenty of sand to use, there might be better things like soft gravel but that's what was used because it was around.

With Biden saying this .....

"It’s Going to be Real,
President Biden on War-Related Food Shortages
Farm Policy News
farmpolicynews.illinois.edu...

“It’s going to be real," Biden said at a news conference in Brussels. 'The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well."

From CNN the same statement is recorded:
Biden says Western leaders discussed food shortages, which he says will be "real"
www.cnn.com...

....... advice on storing food and a thread on it is very timely.

Part of my basement, under the front porch, can be used as a root cellar. I need to remove the old oil tank to insulate a little section of the above ground cement wall yet, but that will be done this summer. Keeping onions away from potatoes is recommended, otherwise they both seem to sprout quickly. If you grow potatoes, just set them out in the fall to dry, do not wash them and they will keep for many months in the right temp and humidity. Been doing this for years now.

Rutabagas can be dipped in wax and kept in the root cellar for a long time too. Just look at the ones in the store to get an idea how to trim them. I have enough wax to do maybe twenty rutabaga in stock and lots of canning jars and lids. I stock pectin and rotate it, new pectin usually goes on sale after I do my strawberries I buy from a farmer to make lots of strawberry freezer jam. So each year I use what I got the year before.

Carrots can be stored in the cool area, but should be put into something to keep them from drying and turning rubbery. I usually put them in a big plastic container along with the potatoes. Having a cool basement is nice, it also keeps the can goods I have in stock from losing their taste for a year after the Best buy date. Everything is rotated.

We go through about three bushels of spuds a year. I lost my supplier of potatoes that are not washed because the guy was old and retired three years ago. I could contact another potato farmer I suppose to get them with the sand on them which is better than some of the antisprouting chemistries they put on potatoes. In the spring, I do usually take some of the sprouting potatoes, cut them carefully, and use them for seed potatoes for my potato garden. Been doing that for years. You can also grow potatoes inside next to the patio door, but the potatoes you get are usually small ones, like baby reds. I have done this and transplanted them in the spring and got potatoes in early june. I also collected the seed pods from the potato plants one year and have potato seeds in stock, but only a couple of hundred seeds or so. Those you have to put in pots and transplant them to get the new variety they create if you have multiple types of potatoes in your field Like I do. The potatoes do not always go to seed, I have only had them do that three times in twenty years and I only collected the seeds the last time...I could have got thousands of seeds if I would have done it before the plant die off and the birds or deer ate the pods. The pod looks like a green tomato.

Also don't plant tomatoes and potatoes too close to each other or you will get all plant and not much tomatoes or potatoes, they wage war against each other and little fruit or tubers are made. Learned that the hard way...about thirty feet is fine.

Pectin is a good thing to keep around in stock, when you add a little to food that is irradiated, it binds to the radioactive dust and keeps it from being absorbed through the intestines. I always try to maintain at least five boxes of pectin during my rotation of the pectin just in case. I have no evidence it works, only that Russia and the US government have tested this and it helps. Remember pectin also does reduce absorption of other nutrients so having some vitamin and mineral supplements in stock is suggested. It will not completely solve the problem but can help. Also, the canned goods do not get much contamination inside from nuclear compounds, but the cans outside can be radioactive. So washing the can is important before opening. The ions irradiate the can and increase the energy on the outside which reflects energy away. Sort of like a mirror reflects your image or a window reflects heat or cold.

I built my house knowing I would store root veggies, and have always had a freezer for the last forty years and we freeze stuff like green beans and strawberries. We stock meats and supplies to save money, not for security, it is nice having everything in stock when you go to make something. It saves time because you are not constantly running to the store when you make a meal. We only stock things we use on a regular basis.

Back to storage.....green onions grow well in a planter next to the patio door, green onions can be grown from seed to but take longer to get an onion which is usable. We buy onion sets early sometimes and plant them before summer when green onions are expensive yet to save money. Also, you can take some out of the planter then pop another bulb in so you have a constant supply with a varying time of maturity. That works really good on the deck, because pulling out the onions can cause sand to be pulled out because they get quite a bit of roots. I also have some traveling onions outside that come up every year and some areas with chives planted. I need to plant some of the garlic that comes up year after year yet, and maybe more asparagus again, the last stuff died off after maybe six or seven years. I have some asparagus seeds, I could plant them and transplant them I suppose because asparagus is an important part of my antiepileptic natural medicine as is cabbage.

Cabbage lasts a long time in a cool location too, but we usually just buy that, I have had bad luck growing it on my land here.

I hope I gave you some tips that will help, some who farm more might know more. I grew up on a farm so I know some stuff, but being a kid, I probably did not listen to everything, I learned as I worked. I also get along with other farmers pretty well and have asked a lot of questions of them over the years. Some of the best cooks were the wives of the farmers when I was young. Going to the gun clubs wild game feed tonight, they have some real good cooks there but tickets have gone up this year, they are now twenty five bucks...but there are lots of nice door prizes which makes up for it if you win a good one. I bought six tickets, plus renewed my membership. I have been treating the kids and grandkids for years to this event, but usually I only get five at a time, and two years ago the tickets were only fifteen bucks. Kids under twelve are only ten now though....great, all my grandkids that like that kind of stuff are over that age.

a reply to: rickymouse

Good that you bring it up, of course onions should be separated as well as garlic if it's around and controlled once in a while. Not cleaning the potato completely from dirt and earth also helps as the skin isn't damaged. I do clean them roughly though, because from where I get them in bulk, they are dusty and dirty, keeps the dirt out of the kitchen since I do not have such a cellar where a bit dirt just vanished into the floor... as it's dirt anyways.

The same goes for eggs, nuts and apples. Never wash those only brush eggs and nuts clean, don't clean the apples or eggs with water, they will spoil a lot faster. The chicken # won't kill, here in my country when you buy eggs they still have chicken # and feathers on them often. Just cleaning them before I crack them.

I lost a whole nut harvest last year because I went out too late when it was wet and many cores already opened, getting mold and fungus inside.

a reply to: TDDAgain

We got lots of hazelnut bushes here but rarely get any hazelnuts. We watch them and just when the ends get to where they are ripe, the squirrels and chippies grab them all. They are migrant workers, there will be twenty squirrels out there hitting every bush and we only have maybe a half dozen squirrels on this property, so they are having a harvest party....could never figure how they can grab those hazelnuts without getting pickers stuck in their mouths. I use gloves when handling them.

Fresh or roasted fresh hazelnuts are great tasting if they are picked mature.

With the bushes I have on my property, I could probably put up thirty pounds of hazelnuts a year if the squirrels didn't get them.

a reply to: rickymouse
It's walnut trees but I do have some hazelnut bushes around. Squirrel are rare here, the tree martens all got them.

The biggest danger is from deer, as they rub their antlers on the fresh tree, peeling off the bark and effectively killing them that way. You sure have seen it in the forest on old trees when the bark is missing and overgrew.

Hazelnuts and pickers? Did you meant to write chestnut?

originally posted by: TDDAgain
a reply to: rickymouse
It's walnut trees but I do have some hazelnut bushes around. Squirrel are rare here, the tree martens all got them.

The biggest danger is from deer, as they rub their antlers on the fresh tree, peeling off the bark and effectively killing them that way. You sure have seen it in the forest on old trees when the bark is missing and overgrew.

Hazelnuts and pickers? Did you meant to write chestnut?

Here is the kind we have growing wild around here. Those little pricks get stuck in your fingers when you pick or peel them. When I was young on our farm we used to pick them, dry them a little, and had them in gunny sacks and would beat them to loosen the outer husk but it is a lot of work and you need gloves. When dumping them out of the gunny sack, or if you rub your eye with some of those pricks on them, they can get in your eye and hurt. But they are worth the work, they taste great raw and are good when cleaned and baked in the oven or over a grate on the campfire.

I wish we had the other kind without all the pickers on them, but that is all we got growing wild around here. Knowing what nature can provide is something worth learning. I like hazelnuts and wild ones seem to have a better flavor, but they are smaller than the ones in the store.

hellohomestead.com...

Here is a video of the easy kind of hazelnuts, but they mention the pricky ones in the video. I wish our hazelnuts were big like those but I am not going to go out and buy these kind of bushes so the squirrels can have extra nuts. The winter is real hard on our hazelnut bushes here, they break from the ice and snow...so I am not going to waste my time and money planting trees for the squirrels.

www.youtube.com...

I did a lot of research on potatoes too, I have some planted in the woods under the pine trees and they come up every year, but the potatoes are only about an inch around now. They do good in the more acid conditions under the white pines...but you need thirty potatoes for a meal for one person after three years or so of going wild like that. I will probably plant some more this summer, if things get rough...nobody is going to look in the woods for potato plants to dig.

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

You definitely should look into making some cheap cold frames for lettuces, greens, broccoli, all kinds of stuff loves the cold.

Storage for root veggies always dry and cool, little light.

And to insure your crop, or extend your season, try some mini hoops for shade/frost and pest barrier cloths.

For anything else, invest in a pressure canner. We can anything and everything. I even started canning meat to use in soups and stews after someone here recommended it.

You can also extend the life of lemons/limes/citrus by storing in cold clean water. You can also ferment lots of veg and keep them good pretty much forever. And who could live without pickled beets?

a reply to: TDDAgain

There's ton's of Walnut trees around here last time I tried to harvest walnuts it was way more work then it was worth trying to get the husk off messy . I'll have to look up a better way of doing it .

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

I was taught a trick for tubers (potatoes or root veggies) that I didn't believe until I tried it myself.

Take the whole clump of dirt/soil with the tuber and put the whole thing in your cellar/basement.
Do not disturb the dirt around it.

It will keep perfectly until next spring. When I mean perfectly, I mean like you dug it right out of the ground fresh.

Do not put container on the floor. Always put it on something. It is also important to check on them and if they look a little dry, just a light spritz of water will do. So far mine are doing great.

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

Normally we used to -now it's only me- go out plenty ahead in time and put up nets under the trees around half a meter or two feet in height above the ground. Come by every few days to push down the net on one side and shake it so everything comes towards you. There will be some branches though but it's better than walking around, crushing them and digging in the moist grass that is often the case when they are ready to harvest.

After collecting, you need to keep them with the husks in a dry and warm place. After around two weeks you can peel them very easy but I suggest you wear rubber gloves because it will stain your fingernails brown.

You should dry them after that further and then about a week later you can now store the whole nuts with the shells in a basket in the cold and dark. The basket helps keeping it airy and prevents mold. I keep them inside the shells, somehow if you open up a few to eat them, they get soft after a few days out of the shell and loose the crunch.

Reminds me I need to prune the apple trees next week latest!

a reply to: rickymouse

Doesn't asparagus take forever to grow from seed ?

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

We had a root cellar with clay floor and sandstone walls on our farm, it was always moist and a bit stale air down there but the potato and other goods did not spoil. I do have a premise left where an old ice cellar is located though, that's for refridgerating meat way into the summer. Put ice in there in winter from the little lake nearby and close the door, there will be ice in summer left still.

You beat me to it. Root vegetables, kept in a root cellar. It's how we did it in the olden days, and it's one of the first things that any prepper who grows their own produce should set up. I can store enough food underground and without electricity that I could get by for a year without ever having to open a can.

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

Asparagus is a luxury crop, better to pick something that you can get two or three crops a year out of, and which has more substance to it.

We're looking to survive, not to start a French bistro.

a reply to: Ravenwatcher

Asparagus is a luxury crop, better to pick something that you can get two or three crops a year out of, and which has more substance to it.

We're looking to survive, not to start a French bistro.