The trick to keeping your storage vegetables fresh all winter is understanding the type of conditions they prefer.  Storage conditions can be measured by temperature, humidity, ventilation, and darkness.  Nearly all crops like it dark and airy, but each vegetable has a favorite range of temperature and humidity conditions.

In practice, I divide our storers up into two main categories --- cool, wet storers and warm, dry storers.  Cool, wet storers thrive in root cellars and can also be kept well in simpler storage operations like mulched garden rows, storage mounds ("clamps"), trenches, a basement, or the crisper drawer in your fridge.  Warm, dry storers will do much better in your attic, an unheated room, or under your kitchen sink.

I'm vastly oversimplifying by dividing crops into these two categories, but it's far too easy to get carried away trying to provide a half dozen different storage conditions to keep all of your crops happy.  The table below gives some storage data on common vegetables:

Vegetable	Optimal storage conditions	My storage conditions	My storage location
Beet	32 - 40 F, 90 - 95% humidity	cool, moist	haven't done it yet
Cabbage	32 - 40 F, 80 - 90% humidity	cool, moist	haven't done it yet
Carrot	32 - 40 F, 90 - 95% humidity	cool, moist	haven't done it yet
Garlic	32 - 50 F, 60 - 70% humidity	warm, dry	kitchen shelf
Onion	32 - 50 F, 60 - 70% humidity	warm, dry	kitchen shelf
Parsnip	32 - 40 F, 90 - 95% humidity	cool, moist	haven't done it yet
Potato	32 - 40 F, 80 - 90% humidity	cool, moist	storage mound
Sweet Potato	50 - 60 F, 60 - 70% humidity	warm, dry	under the kitchen sink
Turnip	32 - 40 F, 90 - 95% humidity	cool, moist	haven't done it yet
Winter Squash (including Pumpkin)	50 - 60 F, 60 - 70% humidity	warm, dry	under the kitchen sink

Despite ignoring some of the optimal conditions, I've had great luck keeping onions, winter squash, and sweet potatoes fresh until they're all eaten up.  (In fact, we still have some of last year's sweet potatoes to finish up as this year's are curing!)  Don't get too caught up in thinking you have to build a fancy root cellar before you can enter the world of storage vegetables.

This post is part of our Storage Vegetables lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Introduction to Storage Vegetables Planning and Planting Storage Vegetables Harvesting Storage Vegetables Curing Storage Vegetables Eating Fresh Vegetables all Winter

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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