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Curing Storage VegetablesSome of your storage
vegetables need to be cured before storage; some don't. If you
cure vegetables that don't need to be cured, they'll rot. And if
you don't cure vegetables that do need to be cured, they'll rot
too. Time for a good list!
Curing serves a couple of purposes. In all crops except white potatoes, a primary purpose is to dry the vegetable up so that it won't rot in storage. White and sweet potatoes and winter squashes develop a hard skin during curing that will protect the crop during storage.  The cheapest and easiest method I've come up
with for curing vegetables is to lay them out on some old window
screens Mom found for me by the side of the road. I put the first
screen on four cinderblocks, cover the screen with drying vegetables,
then put bricks on the four corners of the frame to let me put another
screen on top for a second drying layer. The trick is to get good
air circulation all the way around your vegetables, so don't pile the
roots on top of each other. If you're a good scavenger, you can
recreate my curing rack setup for next to nothing.People with more space will get away with drying their vegetables inside, but our trailer just isn't big enough to handle that type of operation. Instead, I harvest my crops a bit earlier than other folks might and put my drying racks under a tarp or roof outside to cure storage vegetables before the frost hits.
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