Potatoes - Storage Novices Like me should read this!

[GIULIA]

This may sound odd, but I've found cat litter, of the pelleted woodchip variety, very useful for both storing and chitting potatoes. It 'finds out' any that are leaking moisture and mops it up before it can taint the others, plus you can re-use it quite a few times. We are talking clean cat litter here obviously. My own cat prefers bentonite crystals so I got left with a big sack of this woody stuff and found it excellent for spud storage.

[Monika]

Hello Doctor Deb, when harvesting our potatoes, we put any damaged ones to one side and use these first. Quite often, we eventually have to throw some of those away as well, but at least they haven't all been wasted.

[Chantal]

Hi Monika

I do the same as you but with blight the potatoes look perfect and then suddenly turn to mush. I only kept perfect potatoes in my sacks and must have thrown away 25% of them. Every spud that was saved is now cooked and frozen which seemed to be the only way of not losing the lot.

[Granny]

Chantal, I didn't find that with many of our blighted potatoes. They had dark purplish-brown patches visible but were still quite solid. We didn't realise what this was until we started to peel them and discovered they were brown all the way through - but still solid. Maybe we just cauught them earlier. We also remove any that have touched soggy potatoes, wash them and keep them separate, just in case. I think I've said that before, somewhere. If so, sorry.
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Granny

[Doctor Deb]

Thanks for your advice. I've kept any that looked less than perfect separate, and am using them up first. Lots of them have got what I think is slug damage, so I peel twice as many as normal to get enough for a meal! I'm checking the others often, and so far all is well. I checked the onions at the same time last week and found several rotting, and that some of my garlic don't seem to be keeping well also. Hmmm... this veg. growing lark needs a lot more skill than it first appears! It would have been helpful if I had kept all the varieties properly labelled and not jumbled them all together when I harvested them!

[Lady Gardener]

I never wash mine - just dry them off on a sunny breezy day. But even so I do check them during the first few weeks of storage. And yes I did find a couple of rotten ones. I put this down to blight - really bad here this year.

If anyone is interested I put my potatos in paper sacks in a wooden chest - no ventilation - in a frost free shed and they do keep really well - usually till end of March

[CradleyMike]

We are very careful, severely damaged are thrown away, mild damage are put in the use quickly bucket and good ones once dry are put in paper sacks. We check the sacks regularly to remove any damaged potatoes that have been missed earlier