How To Build A Small Cellar From Scrap Materials, Creating A Mini Cellar

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

How to build a small cellar from scrap materials, creating a mini cellar

If you study the available special literature, it turns out that almost all recommendations for creating winter storage facilities for fruit and vegetable products are designed for peasant farms, the areas of which, and therefore the volume of harvests, are many times larger than in summer cottages.

Therefore, it is expensive and unjustified to build storage sheds and cellars of the recommended capacity in these areas. As a rule, there are no necessary conditions for storing crops in a city apartment. Proceeding from this and taking into account the personal experience and experience of other summer residents and gardeners, I believe that at a low level of groundwater, it is justified to create the simplest cellars-collars or pits on the sites, and at a high level of groundwater - various metal or other containers buried in the ground.

As seen from Fig. And, the construction of the collar-cellar is very simple and represents a shallow (about 30 cm) earthen excavation with a wooden flooring and inclined walls, sheathed with slabs or poles. Above the recess there is a gable shelter made of the same materials, which is lined with sod, brushwood or plant stems on top, which are then covered with earth. Root crops for storage are placed in bulk on the flooring, and covered with a layer of dry grass on top. The area on which the collar cellar is being built is dug in with grooves to collect and drain water during rains or melting snow. In some cases, when there are no specified wood materials, sand can be used instead of flooring, and instead of a wooden shelter, two layers of sod alternating with brushwood or stems can be used.

The pit, made in the form of a "jug" (Fig. B), has a neck containing two wooden lids, between which some kind of insulation material is laid. The mouth of the pit-"jug" for protection from rain and melt water is heeled with clay or ordinary earth and strengthened with turf. A plastic wrap is laid on top, which is pressed down with stones or bricks. Root crops in a pit-cellar are placed either in bulk or in bags or boxes, covering them with a layer of dry grass. If the soil in the pit is sandy, then to prevent the walls from collapsing, they are coated with oily clay or covered with mesh material or perforated roofing material.

If the owner of the site has some kind of unused metal or plastic container (an old barrel, bath, tank, refrigerator case, etc.), then it can be used as a storage for root crops by burying it in the ground on the site so that the upper part of the tank exceeded the mark of the highest groundwater level by 15-25 cm. Moreover, as can be seen from Fig. B, the container is closed on top with a wooden lid, pressed after laying the crop with some kind of load (stone, bricks, etc.) and insulated with sawdust, dry leaves, etc. And then a plastic film is laid, over which an earthen embankment is made.

A similar storage for root vegetables, created by me on the basis of the body of an old refrigerator, under the floor of the veranda, according to Fig. Г, differs in that instead of the above-mentioned shelter it has only a boardboard with a folding hatch. In such a simple cellar, it is good to store root crops (potatoes, carrots, beets, etc.) in plastic bags, without worrying about their safety. I would like to note that if according to Fig. A, B and C require the simplest ventilation (tied bunches of brushwood or stems lowered from above, a piece of hose or tube), then in this case ventilation is provided through the hatch and due to the loose fit of the shield.

In conclusion, I note that in all the cellars considered, an optimal microclimate is provided for products from autumn to spring. To guarantee against damage by rot, root crops should be sprinkled with a mixture of fluff lime with dry ash and sand. Those summer residents and city gardeners who do not yet have such cellars or have not yet achieved sufficient harvests can be advised to store root crops at the balcony door in bags of three layers of lutrasil. In this case, it is not necessary to use new material, you can sew bags from the used lutrasil more than once.

If you have a cellar, then before laying the root crops it should be disinfected with a solution of lime in water in a ratio of 1: 5, or powdered with the Ogorodnik sorbent, which has proven itself well and is commercially available.

Diagram of mini-cellars in the form of a collar (A), a

pit-"jug" (B), a

barrel

(C) and an old refrigerator body (D): 1-wooden flooring; 2-wood paneling; 3-root vegetables; 4-dry grass; 5-shelter; 6-sod; 7-brushwood or stems with soil; 8-drainage grooves; 9th pit; 10-wooden lids; 11-film; 12 stones or bricks; 13-barrel; 14-cover; 15-cargo; 16-case of the refrigerator; 17-wooden shield; 18-hatch; 19-bags.

Anatoly Veselov, gardener