Best Practices for Harvesting Root Vegetables
Autumn is here and it is time to start organizing your garden for harvesting your root vegetables and setting up how you will store them over the winter.
Harvesting Root Vegetables
by Ron Krupp
Autumn is a busy time of the year so busy that is my head is spinning with all the tasks to do in the garden patch. It won’t be long before I am harvesting winter squash and digging carrots, turnips and beets. A month earlier, I was pulling onions and digging potatoes. One thing for sure. The harvest has begun, and soon the first frosts will arrive, and I’ll be heating my woodstove on these cool mornings. At the same time, there is beauty in their hills. The autumn air is brisk, there are mist and fog in the valleys, and the maple leaves are beginning to shimmer in hues of red, orange and yellow.
Onions and Spuds – After laying the onions and spuds out in the hot summer sun for three to four days to dry and cure, place in paper bags, bushel baskets or cardboard boxes, whatever is at hand, and store them in a cool, dry place. If the weather turns cold, cover them up. Onions are tricky to dry so they may need more time for curing. Make sure to check them out after a month to see if any rot. One rotten onion or potato can ruin a whole bag. Don’t clean the potatoes or onions off. I make sure to save about 40 pounds of five different varieties of seed potatoes I grow. I don’t re-plant the ones that are infected or diseased. Label the baskets you store the potatoes in, or you will do what I have done and forgotten which ones which are.
Winter Squash – I harvest winter squash (my favorites- butternut, buttercup, acorn, Hubbard, delicata) and pumpkins from mid to late September before an early hard frost can damage them. I make sure they have time to cure in the sun for a couple of days. If I don’t bring them inside right away, I pile up the squash in a hill and cover them with hay or a tarp for protection. Before bringing in winter squash, check for any rotten fruit. Some gardeners dip the winter squash in a weak solution of chlorine bleach and water to kill any diseased parts.
I leave carrots, onions, beets and turnips in the ground until late October and early November. Parsnips can be kept in the earth over winter as long as they are covered with mulch. Mark them with stakes, so you know where to find the whitish light brown roots on a spring day when there is snow on the ground. The sugars become stronger through the long winter months.
If you don’t have a root cellar, you can store carrots, beets, and turnips by placing them in plastic bags in the icebox. They will last a few months. Potatoes, onions and winter squash can be kept in a dry spot in a cool upstairs room. You can also place root crops in a box of dampened sand in the coldest part in your basement. However, if there is a furnace in the cellar, it will most likely be too warm and dry for the root crops. Some gardeners build a separate, unheated room in the cellar to store vegetables like carrots, potatoes, and beets.
In warmer climates, gardeners dig dug holes in the ground, line them with hay, place the vegetables in the hole and cover them with hay.
This system might work in a very mild winter, but where the ground freezes three or four feet down, you better make other plans.
I heard about one gardener who lives in a cold pocket who decided to experiment by not digging up his carrots and potatoes. He left them in the ground and covered the area with a foot and a half of mulch hay. He dug them up as he needed them. This system may work if there is a good covering of snow, but I suspect if the winter had little snow the roots and tubers would freeze. On the other hand, I remember one mild winter in the l970s when my late cabbage got covered with heavy snow in November.
The now never left and kept coming down all winter. Come spring, the cabbage hadn’t frozen, and it tasted sweet and delicious.
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About the Author
Ron Krupp, teacher, writer, entrepreneur, and community organizer has been farming and gardening in Vermont for more than thirty years. He has a master’s degree in teaching from Antioch University and a master’s degree in agriculture from the University of Vermont. He studied biodynamic gardening and farming at Emerson College, U.K. In the 80’s he edited The Green Mountain Farmer. In the mid 90’s he had a garden column in The Vermont Times and a garden commentary show on Vermont Public Radio. He is a frequent guest for features on the Vermont Public Broadcasting System and does garden and farm commentaries. His book The Woodchuck’s Guide to Gardening is going into its tenth printing revised 2013 with over 20,000 books sold). His second book titled Lifting the Yoke: Local Solutions to America’s Farm and Food Crisis is in its second printing. He is working on a third book titled The Woodchuck Returns to Gardening
