In your moist climate, and keeping with the organic and natural theme, most people make a viscous mix of horse manure and water and soil stripped of organics (fresh clay silt and sand) that when applied to the bale walls will weatherize AND provide structure. This ‘manure mortar’ will last for many years, is easy to patch, and will take on the color of whatever clay and sand you use (good colors come from pure quartz sand, or a yellow ochre clay… in addition to a little hue de poop). Keep the whole thing off the ground with a gravel bed. And if you wrap the bales with chicken wire and sew it tight to the bales with a long metal needle and twine prior to manure-ing, you can cleverly sew in door frames and windows and roof support and/or skids….. finish with linseed oil on the outside! From experience with straw bale building- no one should use them for a root cellar without extreme consideration for ventilation! Humidty+straw bale = rot = destroyed food + hazard. Only one bale cellar is in good shape that I’ve seen. There, they placed a water barrier between the bales and an inch-thick cement coating on the buried surface, and backfilled with fine gravel over a drainpipe to prevent moisture buildup. They also added ventilation and earthen plaster to the inside.

For some reason I don’t mind losing apples as much as I would mind potatoes and onions. so it’s a relatively small price to have paid.

I’m not concerned about our losses in storage. I’d like to do better, of course, but there’s a certain amount of loss that one can expect when storing vegetables.

Alas, for now we’re out of options on a root cellar here. Hope you can figure it out!