Save your Harvest like your cryptos!

Just like a server room, veggies like to be kept cold! You too can build your own zero energy year round cold storage bin. I'm going to take you through the theory and using my own build as an example a step by step guide to building your first cold storage space.
Cold storage is ideal for most veggies, some methods of cold storage are as rudimentary as digging a hole in well drained soil place your root vegetables cover with mulch and then soil and mark until its time to dig them up. If you would like to have the efficiency of earth based cooling with the convenience of a refrigerator you are going to need to build an enclosed space underground with both ventilation and drainage. You can build as large as you have materials, money and location for. Digging large cavities in the earth will for most require an excavator. Sepp Holzer shows some great low cost but large designs in his book "Permaculture".
My focus on this project was building on a shovel scale cold storage bin concept. After I had located my Plastic Bin and my site for the cellar, I went from this !
To this!

Firstly you want to find an embankment that you can shovel in with enough space to place your sarcophagus like bin once you are done. I used a pointed shovel and a mattock, the mattock is the poor mans excavator. Secondly you will need to find a large plastic bin or the like to make your enclosure from. I used a hollow metal broom handle to create a pipe for ventilation from the outside to the inside of the enclosure. I then drilled drainage holes where water will collect in the bin, in this case the front lip.

I used the shape of the bin to my advantage, it's a cone shape so with each end laid horizontal to the ground a perfect drainage slope is created from the back of the bin to the front. This also means that I needed to place a wooden floor into my bin for the crates of food to sit level upon. I had some leftover construction grade plywood which I measured and cut to fit the bins interior. The sides are sloped so you will need to cut on an angle, I used my skillsaws angle cut feature here. I also drilled a few small holes through the wood to allow air to circulate and any water or condensation to drain if it should occur.

In my next article I will be going over how to secure the enclosure in the ground and create a simple retaining wall. Feel free to leave any questions you have and I'll go over them in detail as I continue writing this series.