Storing Potatoes

Harvesting and preserving your fruit & veg

Moderators: KG Steve, Chantal, Tigger, peter

Pottyaboutveg
KG Regular
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Jul 14, 2008 10:50 am

I have always eaten potatoes straight away because when I dont they go green. How do you get the potatoes to put a skin on so I can keep them?

Thank you PaV :?:
Monika
KG Regular
Posts: 4546
Joined: Thu Jul 06, 2006 8:13 pm
Location: Yorkshire Dales

Potatoes only go green when they are exposed to light, so the first priority in storage is to exclude light and to keep them out of frost and not too damp. Some people cut off the foliage and then leave the potatoes in the ground for a few days for the skin to harden before lifting them but I must admit in our 30+ years of growing and eating potatoes we have never bothered with that.

We lift the potatoes, wash them gently, drain them on wire riddles, then spread them out on newspapers (weather permitting) for an afternoon or so, turning them frequently, before putting them into flat cardboard boxes (supermarket apple boxes are good), in single layers if at all possible, make sure they are properly dry and then cover them loosely with newspapers and stacking them up, up to eight boxes high. We have a dry garage which is usually frost free but in very cold weather we cover the boxes up with extra sacking and old fleeces.

The advantage of all this is that you handle each potato several times and can see which ones might be green, damaged or with slug holes or onset of blight and get rid of these before storage. The box system (as opposed to sacks) also means you can easily examine the stored potatoes regularly.

Hope that helps, Pottyaboutveg!
Post Reply Previous topicNext topic