A root cellar is one way to store vegetables, underground throughout the Winter months to ensure your vegetables do not freeze, but are accessible throughout the year.

Your root cellar, however, does not have to be an elaborate, underground room.

Method

First, choose a location that won’t flood and that you won’t mind trudging to in the middle of the winter.
Next, start digging.  The size of your hole will depend upon the size of the box or barrel you plan on burying.  Dig a hole larger that the box on all sides, and make the depth at least five or six feet from the surface.

Don’t dig too deep or you’ll find yourself with a well rather than a root cellar. And take care not to leave your hole unoccupied or uncovered.  You don’t want anyone getting hurt.

After your hole is clean and square, fill the bottom of it up with about six inches of large rocks or crushed stone.  This will give excess water somewhere to go so that you do not make vegetable soup prematurely.
At this point, you need to begin preparing the vegetables you intend on storing.  However, some vegetables must be stored differently than others, so this must be a consideration when you are planning what to put in your bin.

In my own cellar, I stored my potato crop. After digging, allow them a day or so of curing outside.  Use up any potatoes that you accidentally nicked or bruised rather than storing them because they’ll rot.  Beware squirrels, along with excess sunlight, which can turn them green and poisonous.  Once the skin of your potatoes has thickened up, you can carefully add them to the bin.

When you’re confident with your hole and veggies, gently place your bin or barrel onto the rocks.

Now cover your bin with straw or hay. Since I had neither of the two, I used pine boughs, which were actually easier to remove when I needed to get in the bin.

Finally, you will need to cover the hole with something solid.  I happened to have an old barn door lying around, but you can use anything from an old car door to a big sheet of plywood.  Just make sure that it covers the hole completely to prevent water seepage and critters from venturing down there.

Building a root cellar like this is much easier than building a large underground structure, but it also has some tactical advantages.

This method could easily serve as a “bug-out” tactic, by building several with critical food around your property; it also can be used to disperse your vegetable supplies, which would reduce waste if something catastrophic happened. To learn more about root cellars, please visit The Prepper Journal.