Help! How do I store potatoes?

hesmy

looking_to_save_money wrote:

My mum told me to keep fresh veg in the fridge and its works a traet!!

Pots in 25kg brown sack from oue local farm shop, brought some last christamc and they lasted until March.... all for £5.25.... a lot cheaper than the supermarkets, and not in platsic bags which make them sweat!!

Oh winters coming and I love mash...... with bangers & gravy!!

That's an excellent price,if you can't get to a farm shop,you can go to a wholesale market,there'll be one in most sizeable towns.You don't need an account,or card or anything,well you don't in the Bradford one,and they won't turn you away.These places are struggling as they're there to service small greengrocers which are closing down so they'll be glad to see you(also helps to stop the big supermarkets getting a monopoly).Typical price for 25kg King Edwards,about £6,and they're fresher.And they come in a thick paper sack!:beer:

malcolmwilliamson

When I was a lad in Norfolk my used to grow our own potatoes; enough to see us through the winter. I remember the bulk of them being stored in a 'hod' in the garden.
This was constructed by digging a slight depression and lining the base with straw. The equivalent of 3 or four bags of spuds were then placed in a carefully constructed mound on the straw and the sides were then covered with more straw arranged vertically to the top where a hole was left for ventilation. The straw was then covered with a layer of soil.
The spuds would remain in the hod until we'd run out when the process of building the hod was reversed and the contents placed in old style hessian sacks.
I don't remember ever finding frost damaged, rotten, or wrinkled potatoes when a hod was opened.

This method is not very useful if you live in a tower block. Window boxes aren't big enough.

angelatgraceland

Many garden shops/garden/pet shops sell hessian sacks at about £1 each. The type we used to put our newspapers out in. Potatoes dont need to go in the fridge-I store minei n my garage.

Cinders2001

Seems like a lot of us have found a good way of storing the spuds.

Mics_chick

I'm not talking about an actual sack of potatoes because I haven't bought any yet... but I am thinking of doing.

If I buy a bag of potatoes from the supermarket they seem to go off within a couple of weeks if I haven't used them all. So if I bought a whole sack full from a farmers market how long could I realistically expect them to last...?

flis21

I know that Lakeland and Betterware (and probably other places) do these special bags which you can put potatos in to make them last a lot longer than they would do otherwise. Might be a good purchase if you have trouble with them going soft / green early.

ariba10

Keep them in a cool dark place but it must be frost free.

We keep ours in an outhouse.

frosty

I buy a sack every month,I keep them in the shed.As long as you keep them somewhere dark and cool they should last a long time.

martindow

Ideally they need to be kept dark (so they don't go green) and cool but not frosted. Farmers store them in open barns with straw over the pile of bags to keep the frost away. An unheated garage or dry shed would be fine as long as it was not very frosty and they would keep until the spring when they would start sprouting. You also need to check that mice aren't having a nibble. They are so cheap buying by the bag that even if a few go off you've still got a bargain.

culpepper

Check through for half potatoes or ones with a nick in. Those would go bad and contaminate the good ones.
Make sure they dont get damp by standing on cardboard not a cold concrete or wooden floor .