With the price of produce constantly going up I'm on a mission to buy as little as possible during the winter months. To do this, we have started to store fresh carrots, potatoes, squashes, onions, and garlic for the winter months. We also freeze and can them but its hard to beat fresh.
It's been eight months since we harvested the 2022 garlic. Along with our remaining pound of garlic we also have squashes and onions hanging around in the garage still. That's not too bad. We ran out of carrots already and my potatoes started sprouting in late February, so we'll have to plant more carrots this year and find another storage method for our potatoes.
We previously tried storing everything in the basement, but it didn't last quite as long. The cooler temperature in the garage of 8-12 degrees and humidity around 33% seems to have been more effective.
I think that's a good length of time to keep fresh food on hand but I'm going to continue testing new methods to see if I can push even longer into the spring next year.