Every time I put potatoes in the cellar, I try to make them last by keeping them dry, but they sprout anyway. Can anyone tell me how to keep them for the winter without having them sprout? My cellar is very damp. Thanks!!

-- MicheleRae Padgett (Michelesmelodyfarm@yahoo.com), September 19, 2001

Answers

OK, MicheleRae, here goes (From Root Cellaring by Mike & Nancy Bubel:

"Second-crop or late-maturing potatoes are the best for storage. The problem with summer-dug potatoes is that you can't cool them easily, and they shrivel and sprout much sooner in the warm weather. Early potatoes will keep about four to six weeks at a temperature of 60 degrees F. Potatoes are ready to dig when the tops dry up, but they may be safely left in the ground until cool weather, as long as six weeks after the tops have died, if drainage is good. In a very wet fall, though they might resprout or rot, so keep an eye on them. . . . If you must dig when weather is warm, do the job early in the morning while the soil and the tubers are still cool.

Potatoes should be cured before storing to give them a chance to heal surface nicks and toughen their skins. Spread them out in a protected place where the temperature is 60 to 75 degrees F. They should not be exposed to rain, sun, or wind during curing. After a one-week to two-week curing period, potatoes are ready for storage. Their skins will have thickened and minor wounds should be scarred over. Potatoes with many harvest injuries produce much more heat in storage and are harder to cool, especially if they have dirt clinging to the skins. Keep them in shallow layers.

For winter keeping, put your potatoes in a cold, damp spot. . . . Potatoes keep best at 36 to 40 degrees F with high humidity, around 90 percent. At low temperatures, 35 degrees and below, some of the starch in the potato turns to sugar, giving the spuds a puzzling and not very appealing sweet flavor. This is easily corrected, though. Just bring small batches of the affected potatoes into a 70-degree-F room, and in a week or two the sugar will revert to starch.

Under good storage conditions, which are not hard to provide, potatoes will keep for four to six months. Keep them dark. Light, as well as warmth, promotes sprouting and will also turn the potatoes green. Towards spring, many growers try to keep their potatoes in the lower temperature range to hold back sprouting as long as possible."

Hope this helps.

-- Laura Rae Jensen (lrjensen@nwlink.com), September 19, 2001.

Last year when this subject came up, someone suggested that they stored their potatoes in plastic 5-gallon buckets with the lids on. I tried this last year, putting mine in my semi-heated garage under the work benches where it was darkest (I also used the green buckets which cut more light). I put a perfect ripened apple into each, as the ethylene gas that they give off is supposed to retard sprouting of potatoes.

Perhaps putting them into the buckets would keep them from getting TOO damp for you. I don't know if the apple helped or not (check them often for any sign or smell of rotting), but mine stayed good until March, then started to sprout and were just about perfect for planting the remainder out.

-- julie f. (rumplefrogskin@excite.com), September 20, 2001.