For as long as people have needed to preserve food, there have been root cellars. Before refrigeration, digging below ground could make use of the insulating properties of soil. Temperatures are cooler and perishable items last longer.
Erik Helland has spent some time researching the subject, “Everybody would have these large gardens, but you couldn't consume everything. So, a lot of the times they would take it they'd have a hole or a big pit that was below the house and that's where they would store vegetables.”
Except for apples. Growers learned that the fruit gives off an ethylene, which makes things spoil more quickly. Preserving food was important for everyone, man and animal. Cellars would contain feed to sustain livestock through the winter. People could continue to include produce in their diet too, “A lot of people started doing the canning and preserving. They could figure out how to preserve all of their hard work and labors of love of in the garden by putting it down in the cellar.”
Root cellars are a wonderful resource for garden centers too. “Root cellar developed for a lot of the nurseries that were actually producing the plant material.” Helland explained.
Garden nurseries can grow plants to different sizes for customers. The trick is storing that product until they can sell them. Helland continued, “In the fall they would come in and they'd have these big machines and they'd lift everything up. They'd take the bare root plant into these buildings at high humidity and low temperatures just above freezing.”
Inventory needs to happen in the off season so that the stock nursery can sort and grade the available plants, “Then the next spring is when they'd ship it to a garden center like us. And then that's when we would turn around and we either potted up or sell it as a bare plant.”
Stock stays in the cellar at Landscape Garden Centers until the temperature warms enough for the plants to come out of dormancy. Buying bareroot stock enables the customer to purchase more plants at a better price. Once the plant starts waking up, they need to be potted and the cost goes up.
Helland concluded, “So the whole history of how all of that came down to is just because it was a way of preserving plant material and able to have access to it right away in the spring, rather than waiting or trying to take things out of the ground in the earliest spring when it can be muddy and wet and frozen.”
