Creating a Harvester-Friendly Basement

The biggest problem with my half-basement is that it tends to get damp whenever it rains. In a very hard rain there might even be water on the floor. Not much usually, so I tend to just keep anything damageable off the floor. However, I recently (last summer) cleaned out most of the accumulated junk in the basement and then this past winter I did a little more. Now I keep thinking it would be an ideal place, if arranged properly, to set it up as a gardener/harvester basement. You know, clear out more of the junk and set up decent shelves for storage. Maybe setup a few top shelves with fluorescent lighting to grow seedlings down there in early spring. There's a spare stove already down there, I might see if I can get it cleaned up and hooked up, if it works, it would make a great canning stove, since I have discovered that canning tends to ruin a stove's top fairly quickly. It would be nice to have. Perhaps in a few week-ends, when things quiet down a little and the children settle into their school routines I'll have the time for a project like that.