Freshly picked fruits and vegetables are very tasty and healthy, but when stored for a long time in a warm place, the fruits begin to deteriorate. Therefore, more and more gardeners use the cellar to store vegetables. But before you stock up on good for the winter, you must carefully prepare the cellar.
The preparation of the cellar for storing vegetables should be carried out in several stages. In the spring, after the warm weather has set, open the cellar fully and dry it. Take out all containers and shelves intended for storing fruits. Wash and sanitize them thoroughly using warm water, soap, hard sponges, soda, and other cleaning products. Having brought all objects into proper form, dry them in the open air.
To prevent the occurrence of various diseases, it is necessary to whitewash the walls. Use a solution of chalk for this, add one hundred grams of copper sulphate to each bucket. Slaked lime is also good for whitewashing walls, it has a strong disinfecting effect.
An earthen or clay floor also requires thorough disinfection, which must be carried out using the above-described mortar or lime-fluff (it must be distributed one and a half centimeters thick over the entire surface of the floor). To prevent the occurrence of green mold on the walls of the cellar, fumigate the room with sulfur. Put it on metal trays (30 grams of sulfur per cubic meter of air), set fire to it and quickly leave the cellar, carefully closing the door behind you. After two to three days, carefully ventilate the fumigated room.
Put the fruit loading, keep the door open all night. Due to this, no further condensation moisture will appear on the shelves of the cellar. To determine the humidity in the cellar use a special device - a hydrometer.
To ensure constant air exchange, two pipes with a diameter of twelve centimeters can be laid in the walls of the room and brought out into the street, it is desirable that the pipes are at different ends of the vegetable store. One pipe should take air to the street, and the second to let it inside the cellar.
