Beyond the Root Cellar: The Market Gardener's Guide to Growing and Storing Vegetables for Off-Season Sales and Food Security - Softcover

Knapp, Sam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1645022102 ISBN 13: 9781645022107

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Co, 2025

Synopsis

Beyond the Root Cellar is the inspiring guide that proves that – with a little ingenuity – the savvy grower can successfully select, harvest, store and sell vegetables all year round, providing their family and community the local food they need during winter months.

Sam Knapp built Offbeet Farm, a winter storage farm in interior Alaska, from the ground up. His success there has been a testament to the many benefits of growing crops for wintertime sales. His methods continually prove that winter storage is an excellent way to diversify a farm’s offerings, spread the workload throughout the year, retain customers and employees during the off-season and bolster local food systems.

Beyond the Root Cellar is a compilation of insights, advice and instruction, drawing on Sam’s experience and that of many other storage farmers he’s met along the way. It is, Sam says, the book he wishes he had when he embarked on his own winter storage business, and will help pave the way for growers both new and established who are interested in storage farming.

In Beyond the Root Cellar, you’ll find tips and tools for:

• Selecting crops and varieties that are best for storage
• Navigating the ins and outs of storage farm financials and planning
• Harvesting, processing, and moving crops into storage
• Designing, creating, and managing temperature- and humidity-controlled storage areas

 

Also included are profiles of nine different storage farms, a crop compendium with in-depth information about eighteen storage crops, and full-colour photography to show a range of storage facilities, methods and crops.

Beyond the Root Cellar is the must-have, comprehensive winter storage handbook for a wide range of growers, from commercial farmers to market gardeners to smallholders.

About this title

About the Author

Sam Knapp grew up in the woods near the shores of Lake Superior with little exposure to farm life. After earning degrees in physics and chemistry and starting down the career path of engineering, Sam caught the farming bug while working on a research farm in Sweden. He worked on vegetable farms in Sweden, Alaska, Michigan, and Wisconsin before starting his own Root Cellar Farm in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to earn extra income while completing a master’s degree in plant ecology. In 2020, Sam moved outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, where he built Offbeet Farm from scratch in a patch of boreal forest. Offbeet Farm provides vegetables to the Fairbanks community during the long, dark Alaskan winters through a winter-only community supported agriculture (CSA) program and sales to local groceries. Owing to his scientific background, he is a self-professed nerd when it comes to energy-efficiency, farm tools, and spreadsheets. In his free time, Sam is an avid cross-country skier and musician.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1645022102
• ISBN 13: 9781645022107
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288