Rating: 
Summary: Very clear advice for hanging onto your harvest longer.
Review: This is a great book for (food) gardeners and for people who have some land available to them. Although there are suggestions for "nooks and crannies" in your house, most of those ideas sound like ideas for older (draftier) homes. The suggestions for building your own working root cellar are clear, with illustrations to help you plan. There are lists of things that keep well and under what conditions to keep them. The authors even list certain varieties of (for instance) apples that keep better than others. There's a month-by-month plan of what could be coming out of your garden, going into the root cellar, and what could be canned or frozen. If you have a large garden, this is an incredibly useful book. However, those of us with smaller modern homes, smaller yards, and smaller, less heavily-producing gardens will be a little disappointed. As I read this, I came to the conclusion that it would be pretty darned difficult to have a root cellar on our property, because we don't have a useable cool north corner to put one in. Not impossible, mind you, it would just take a lot more effort, planning, and money to build it. I recommend this book highly for people who raise substantial amounts of their own produce. This book will really extend your harvest. With imagination and a little time and effort, you can have a root cellar that keeps your family in fresh food you grew all year long.
Rating:
Summary: Very clear advice for hanging onto your harvest longer.
Review: This is a great book for (food) gardeners and for people who have some land available to them. Although there are suggestions for "nooks and crannies" in your house, most of those ideas sound like ideas for older (draftier) homes. The suggestions for building your own working root cellar are clear, with illustrations to help you plan. There are lists of things that keep well and under what conditions to keep them. The authors even list certain varieties of (for instance) apples that keep better than others. There's a month-by-month plan of what could be coming out of your garden, going into the root cellar, and what could be canned or frozen. If you have a large garden, this is an incredibly useful book. However, those of us with smaller modern homes, smaller yards, and smaller, less heavily-producing gardens will be a little disappointed. As I read this, I came to the conclusion that it would be pretty darned difficult to have a root cellar on our property, because we don't have a useable cool north corner to put one in. Not impossible, mind you, it would just take a lot more effort, planning, and money to build it. I recommend this book highly for people who raise substantial amounts of their own produce. This book will really extend your harvest. With imagination and a little time and effort, you can have a root cellar that keeps your family in fresh food you grew all year long.
Rating: 
Summary: This book gives the complete root cellaring picture.
Review: We're fortunate to have bought a property with a well designed root cellar already in place. Until I read this book, I had no idea how a root cellar 'worked'. This book suggests what foods are best for root cellaring, how long to expect to store them, and what temperatures should be maintained. Had I not read this book I would have wasted time and enery, and lost the nutrients in some foods by canning them rather than root cellaring them. A city dweller friend of mine borrowed my book and has decided to buy it. There are variety of good root cellar plans complete with illustrations and drawings for nearly any situation.
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