If you find yourself getting a good deal on Apples, Potatoes or other hardy produce, you might try to use it all up at once before it goes bad. or, you might consider canning some of the excess if you can. Here is another solution that will have your apples and other things lasting for at least six months.
First, let me caution you against storing those apples in the refrigerator. Apples are okay stored short term in the fridge. In fact, I do it myself. I can store apples in the refrigerator for up to two weeks before they start doing the shrivel thing. And they would certainly take up a lot of valuable fridge space if I needed to do it long term. For longer term storage, let’s look to our ancestors. When the apple crop came in, I am sure there was plenty of pie baking and canning going on. But they also stored a lot of their apples in a root cellar.
A root cellar is a small enclosure that is generally built in the ground below the house or inside a small hill outside of the house. It is a place to store apples and produce at the exact temperature they need to last through the fall and winter. This is between 32 and 45 degrees F.
Of course, you could go ahead and build your own root cellar, but there is a far easier way to achieve the same affect. Create an artificial root cellar using a box or styrofoam chest placed in a cool dark spot, such as your basement, garage, or cellar. You want to make sure that the spot you select stays dry and doesn’t have any major temperature fluctuations. If you heat your basement, for example, then it wouldn’t be a good place to set up an artificial root cellar. Nip down to your cellar whenever you want some apples. This is especially nice in the winter, when apples can sell as high as $1.59 a pound.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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