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

“Overflowing with invaluable tips and innovative strategies, this guide goes beyond the typical fast crops seen in most market gardens. . . I encourage all growers to study it and level up their farming game.”—Jean-Martin Fortier, author of The Market Gardener and The Winter Market Gardener

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 throughout the off-season, 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. For the last four years, his success at Offbeet Farm 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 more evenly 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 Sam has met along the way. It is, Sam says, the book he wishes he had when he embarked on his own winter storage business, and that he hopes will 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-color photography throughout that depicts 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 homesteaders.
“This is next-level market gardening. Knapp is practical and inspiring . . . If you grow vegetables, I recommend that you pick up a copy of this book.”—Ben Hartman, author of The Lean Micro Farm

“A must-read for anyone who wants to store produce for any length of time. . . , Even if you don’t plan on storing produce all winter, this book will show you how to keep it as fresh as possible for as long as possible.”—Andrew Mefferd, editor, Growing for Market magazine, author of The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook

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.