At the main harvest time, vegetables are often so plentiful that you cannot fully utilize them. Root vegetables such as carrots, beetroot, celery or radishes and cabbages with the outer leaves removed remain crisp and fresh in a soil heap during the winter months. You can find out how you can easily build this yourself in the following article.
Those who like luxury can provide the ground rent with a door
What is a ground rent?
This is a pit about 40 centimeters deep in which vegetables are stored during the cold season. It comes from times when there were no refrigerators. In contrast to an earth cellar, the heap can be created very easily, inexpensively and in a small space, for example in a harvested bed.
The materials needed:
- spade and shovel
- play sand
- Fresh, clean straw
- Fine mesh wire to protect against voles. Alternatively, you can use green vegetable boxes.
- A wooden board as a cover
Which place is suitable?
The ground heap should not be placed too far from the house so that you can easily reach it even on inhospitable winter days. In addition, the place must be chosen so that the small pit does not fill up with water when the snow melts. The edge of the garage, a flower bed near the wall of the house or an unheated greenhouse would be ideal.
Creating the rent
- First, dig a pit that is at least 30 centimeters deep. The size depends on the amount of vegetables you want to store. For four people, this would be about 100 centimeters wide and two to three meters long.
- Sprinkle a two-inch layer of sand on the floor.
- Secure the edges with formwork boards, old bricks or patio stones.
- Lay the entire rental with wire. Alternatively, you can use wooden or plastic vegetable boxes.
- The edges are lined with straw. This ensures good air circulation.
- Layer the vegetables in separate layers, which you in turn cover with sand. It is important that the vegetables do not touch each other.
- Once everything is safe, cover the last layer of sand with a board.
On frost-free days you can open the heap and remove the vegetables in portions.
tips
Sprinkle walnut leaves in the pile for additional protection against mice. The small rodents do not like the smell of the leaves at all and stay away from the stored food.
The garden journal freshness ABC
How can fruit and vegetables be stored correctly so that they stay fresh for as long as possible?
The garden journal freshness ABC as a poster:
- as a free PDF file to print out yourself