Illustration: Permaplans
Root cellar
A room under an earth mound: cool, moist and dark – apples and roots keep for months.
From about one metre down, the earth stays at 5–10 °C all year. A root cellar uses this: a stone or timber room, covered with earth and planted, the door facing north.
Stores well: apples, pears, potatoes, carrots and beetroot (in moist sand), cabbage, pumpkins (rather dry), preserves.
Tips: keep apples apart from potatoes and cabbage (ethylene makes them ripen faster), air it regularly, sort out anything rotten at once – onto the compost.
In Garden Survival fruit keeps three times as long in the root cellar as in the house.