If you store potatoes, do you.......

[TnAndy]

rub the sprouts off at any point in storage ?

We grow/store a whole lot of our own food, and I built a root cellar years ago for things like potatoes. Store them on some screens I built after finding they needed better air circulation to keep them from going soft or rotting storing in old milk crates. We go thru them once in late fall, like November, then a couple times in winter, and rub the sprouts off....again to help keep them firm and good in storage. Spent an hour this morning doing it.

Looking in the root cellar door:

Screens are some leftover 2x lumber with a saw kerf and 1/2" hardware cloth inserted into that, then some short blocks of 2x4 screwed/glued to the bottom for legs to allow enough room for air to circulate around the layers.

The small potatoes in bags are next year's seed....about mid Feb, they will go on screens to get a good sprout going, then go in the ground as soon as it can be worked, about mid March.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Nice facility. I will have to forward those pictures to my friend who looks after our garden. Of course, I will end up making those wire shelves. Crappy year for our potatoe (german butter ball) harvest. Plus, we never thought mice would like them. Wrong! Too bad, potatoes stored properly take up so much room.

Thanks for the good idea

 

[oosik]

When we grew spuds - they were stored in burlap bags - around 25# per bag and hung off the floor in the basement. It was always so cool/cold down there we never got much growth from any eyes. Wow - you can plant in March - we would plant the end of May or first week of June. If we planted earlier, the ground was still too wet and the cuts would rot.

 

[Oaktree]

When we grew spuds - they were stored in burlap bags - around 25# per bag and hung off the floor in the basement. It was always so cool/cold down there we never got much growth from any eyes. Wow - you can plant in March - we would plant the end of May or first week of June. If we planted earlier, the ground was still too wet and the cuts would rot.

I store 'em in covered cardboard boxes (like the ones the supermarkets get them in) off the floor in the basement. Like you, my basement is cold enough that by the time they start to sprout it's almost time to plant 'em anyway.

We also do our planting end of May/first week in June, not so much for wet ground but more to avoid a late-season frost. I usually hold off a couple weeks (til mid-June or so) for potatoes...seems to keep the potato bugs to a minimum. Dig 'em in mid-Sept.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I sent your pics to my friend. She is Envious and is asking that I make some of those wire shelves. But, there is still the mouse issue.

 

[oosik]

Now that I think about it, we had late season frosts and those most miserable pocket gophers. Had to give up on spuds - couldn't plant enough to feed all the pocket gophers. Late frosts - back in '85 we lost our corn crop to a late frost on July 17. I remember because I wrote it up in our log book. The first two years here, '82 &'83 were great. Huge garden - massive freezer, full of frozen foods. Then came '84 and all the wildlife found the garden. We had deer, coons, pocket gophers, crows, black birds, chipmunks, mice, squirrels and the neighbors cows. The garden kept getting smaller every year and around '95 we decided it was a lot easier to "harvest" at Costco. The forrest creatures don't understand sharing very well. Our garden turned into a "food plot" like a lot of you guys have for the deer.

 

[TnAndy]

I sent your pics to my friend. She is Envious and is asking that I make some of those wire shelves. But, there is still the mouse issue.

You could re-design them a little to include a side with hardware cloth that would be mouse proof, then use an empty on top. We've never had a mouse problem in the root cellar, but the door is real tight.....plus I apply poisoned bait liberally each fall when they start to move in the rest of the house and that puts a crimp in their activity.

 

[jeff9366]

I have read that leaving a little garden soil on harvested spuds helps preserve them.

Is this true?

 

[Sawyer Rob]

IF you are getting sprouts, then your storage is too warm...

I do NOT wash my potatoes after digging, They get washed when we use them...

SR

 

[TnAndy]

Only way I could store them any colder is mechanical refrigeration....or spray them with Clorpropham that retards sprouting like the commercial boys do....uh, no thanks.

Ground temps are mid 50's here, so that is what the root cellar starts at, best case, in the early fall. I have a small fan on a timer so it starts pulling colder air in between midnite and 6am thru the vent, and it will gradually lower the temps into the 40's. Yesterday, for example, the high outside was in the mid 30's, low last night 27....so I bypassed the little timer and ran the fan all day and night...cellar temp as of right now is: 48 degrees.

The mass effect of being in the ground that is low-mid 50's is really hard to overcome, and keep it there. Highs tomorrow/Sunday will be mid 20's, lows in single digits, so I'll leave the fan running, and I'll manage eventually to get the room temp down in the low 40's....but like I said, short of mechanical refrigeration, that is the best I'll get.