Storing Potatoes

[mew]

How do you store yours?

Thanks MEW xxx

[Wombat]

Hey Again!

Usually in a box or bag in a cupboard. If we have a lot, in the garage, but it gets a bit warm in there really....

nev

[Millymollymandy]

In the dark, in as cool a place as possible, but frost free. Not in anything plastic - heavy duty paper sacks such as feed sacks or even cat litter sacks are good.

[Stonehead]

We use 10-hundredweight coal bunkers with the potatoes placed between layers of straw. Full details on my blog here.

We've just removed the last 25kg - after 11 months most were still useable as pig feed, for brewing, or even for human consumption. It meant a good overlap between last year's maincrop and this year's first and second earlies (which was good as the poor weather meant the harvest has been delayed). We still have the maincrop to lift.

Apologies for not going into more detail about the potato store, but I'm just about asleep having been working since dawn, plus having cycled 10 miles on the trike. I was suppose to be cooking dinner now, but have been sent off with a coffee in a vain attempt to keep me awake!

Oh, one thing - better ventilation would have been good. I drilled holes in the lids of the bins but we still had some problems with condensation. I now have a 12v leisure battery and solar charger, so I intend rigging up a 12v computer fan on top of each lid and using those to pull air through the bins.

[Jack]

Gidday

I store mine where they grew but just cover with more soil. They store right through the winter sweet-as but tend to sprout a bit before the new seasons new spuds are ready because of the ground warming up.

However I was told you jokers caint do that cos of some slugs that get em underground so the idea might not work up there.

[Stonehead]

Gidday

I store mine where they grew but just cover with more soil. They store right through the winter sweet-as but tend to sprout a bit before the new seasons new spuds are ready because of the ground warming up.

However I was told you jokers caint do that cos of some slugs that get em underground so the idea might not work up there.

Slugs and cold. If the ground freezes, then so do the potatoes. That's why we store ours in bins, insulated with straw and placed in the middle of the building. The grain bins against the walls of the building sometimes go below zero in winter but the potato bins haven't dropped below 5C - yet!!!

An old fashioned clamp may work, but you need a good depth of straw and soil over the top of the potatoes (or other vegetables) to provide enough insulation.

[Millymollymandy]

Gidday

I store mine where they grew but just cover with more soil. They store right through the winter sweet-as but tend to sprout a bit before the new seasons new spuds are ready because of the ground warming up.

However I was told you jokers caint do that cos of some slugs that get em underground so the idea might not work up there.

Not just slugs! You should have seen what happened to my parnsips - little b*stard rodent ate all the insides of my parsnips from underground leaving the skin and tops looking perfect from above ground!

Actually it wasn't the disaster that it sounds because I had already harvested millions of the things and frozen them.