Niemela's Market Gardens: Opening an earth pit, and some pictures...

After a couple weeks, I take my pen (or rather my keyboard) in hand to show you the opening of one of our earth pits. I've mentioned them before, but haven't shown pictures, so here goes. But first, today the sun tried breaking out from behind the clouds......

Standing in the north field, shooting WSW.

The clouds gobbling up the blue(ish) skies....

While the sun was trying to peek out, and the fluffy cotton candy clouds were cruising by, it would have been fun to lay on my back and watch them sail along. But I don't like to lay in a snowbank, so was content to crouch down by the chainsaw and wood pile (had been cutting this fall's firewood), and watch for a while as one of the kiddos ran for the camera. Shortly afterwards, a few snowflakes started falling.......

Now on to the earth pit. Lots of root crops like to be stored in cool, dark, moist places. Not being one to buy beets and rutabagas and spuds and such when they are so easy to grow AND store, we squirrel some away for family use during the long winters. My lovely wife Janice had mentioned we need beets and rutabagas, so off to the "store" we went. Greater love hath no man for his wife than this, that he would go slipping along over the snow in the middle of the winter, to dig some stored veggies for her meal-making out of a hole in the cold ground. :) Well, in this case, I didn't have to actually do the digging, one of my stalwart sons did the hard work, so I could take pictures to share with y'all, as my sister-in-law from Texas would say. :)

Just above the hole in the snow, there is a mound. Can't really see from looking at it, but it is a slight mound.

See the mound? Probably not, but it is there. :)

Now you can see it better, to the right of my son James' foot.

Good meals in waiting....

He dug and chopped around until he could get an edge of the now-frozen "cap", and pried it off. Often the cap on these pits will be frozen, but no worries!

Underneath the frozen cap is nice fluffy dirt, which he dug away until the ferns we put down over the veggies started showing.

We're gettin' there...

We usually add a layer over the vegs before putting the dirt back over them. It's nice to kinda have a buffer so you don't have to sort through too much dirt right away, and you know to stop scraping with the shovel so hard, lest you end up with cut beets before you want them cut up. :) I like to use old dead bracken ferns which grow in abundance here, or dryish dead leaves. Straw might work, but might mold faster, which might impart a moldy flavor to the food. I say might, because I usually just use whatever we have around, and straw we don't produce ourselves, so don't have too much actual experience with it. Tried using hay once in an apple pit, but it got a bit moldy and even the apples that weren't moldy still tasted like it. The animals didn't mind, though, and ate them right up. Anyhow, pull back the ferns, and lo and behold.....

FOOD! Beets and rutabagas!

Parked in there mid November, if memory serves, and this coming on the end of January, still in great shape. A few little sprouts at the top, but firm as firm can be, and ready for cookin', after a really good scrubbing, of course. I meant to write a note to myself what's in each pit, and scratched some notes for a couple pits, but never got the rest of them done. No big deal, even if we don't know before digging what's in there, we'll find out when we dig, and if need be adjust menus accordingly. Kinda like opening a present, or not knowing the sex of a baby before it's born. The surprise of not knowing and then finding out is more fun. :)

Here's how the beets and rutabagas were looking. They weren't all this nice and shapely, of course, some smaller, some a bit more ugly, but all are tasty and ready to feed us.

"Winter Keeper" beet, keeping well through the winter.

Helenor Rutabaga.

Yummy!

Getting to the bottom....

The bottom! Thanks for keeping our food for us.

We put them in an empty chicken food sack, and took them into the house where it was warm and bright.

Pretty, ain't it?

If you are intrigued by ways to keep your harvest, and avoid as much reliance on the grocery store as possible, I want to encourage you- you can do it! If you have a piece of dirt, you can store your own root veggies. Plant an extra row or two (or ten) in your garden, for storage. Usually, it's best to do a bit later planting for winter storage, Johnny's Selected Seeds has not only great seeds, they have lots of info too. On their website, you can find charts and calculators and other helpful things, to show when to plant what for each season.

When you are ready to park your veggies for the winter, wait until the weather is really cooling in fall, but not too long; they won't last well in the pit if they are frozen solid, for instance. A few good frosts aren't usually a problem, and actually help the flavor of many crops. Then pick a location that is not in a low spot, you don't want them sitting in water. Dig a hole, we usually dig a foot and a half or so deep. Pile the veggies in the bottom, how ever much you want and can eat up in a couple weeks or so after digging. Then put down a layer of material as mentioned above, load the dirt back on, mound it up and pack around the edges to keep out soaking fall rains, and let them wait there until you need them. Just figure out a way to find the pits under the snow. Use a GPS, stick a stick by the pit, walk so many paces due north of such and such tree, or whatever. You don't want to have to snowblow the whole yard (or wherever you put them) to find the root pits. :) If your garden is in a higher location, right there in the garden would work too. Just be mindful that digging that deep is going to bring up some lower soil, and put some of your precious topsoil deeper down.

I'd like to end with some colorful pictures from the past- in a season dominated by gray and white, I like to see color, even if it is just staring back at me from a stupid mindless computer monitor. :)