Many homesteading skills are best learned through experience. And that I say from, well, experience.
Most any of the tasks that we so desperately desire to take on as homesteaders require a sense of adventure – of focus – of determination to make it work. It was the same situation this past August, when I dug 75 pounds of potatoes out of the garden bed (that had since been trampled in the making of our greenhouse which was built atop the potato bed).
I lovingly stared at this orbs of starchy goodness – in all their beautiful shades of brown, red, purple, and yellow. Like a dull rainbow, the sat on the soil boasting of winter culinary potential.
As someone who preserves, cannes, freezes, dries, and saves as much food as possible from our summer harvest months, it was incredibly important to me that these potatoes store well through the fall and into the winter. I wanted them. I needed them! Oh, baby did I ever.
Time to dive into the deep end.
I kept 50 pounds of fingerling potatoes at our house to eat through the Fall, since they don’t store quite as well as the larger storage varieties. Combined with those we freshly dug out of the garden all summer, these fingerlings have provided us with all of our potato needs since last June! Incredible!
But then came the storage potatoes. The big daddys. The meat of the matter. Those were stored in a special way – dried in the heat of the sun to develop skins and kept in a safe place for the months ahead.
Now – before I go into specifics, I want to make a very important point: February potatoes are not July potatoes. And January potatoes are not August potatoes. As with most food that is kept for months on end, they fade from their stout and bold summer state to a state of… well, less luster. But that’s okay. Because March potatoes don’t need to be July potatoes. They just need to get us through till summer.
How To Store Potatoes
1. Dig the potatoes from the soil with your hands.
No matter what tool I try and use for this, I always end up jabbing the potatoes, rendering them useless for long term storage. So instead, my knees hit the ground and my hands dive into the soil, fingers pulling the spuds from their nesting ground. Consider it sweat equity in your culinary future.
2. Let the potatoes dry in the sun for a day.
Harvest on a hot and dry day. As you dig the potatoes, lay them out on the top of the soil to ‘air dry’. This time in the sunshine will help them to toughen their skin and help them to dry out just ever-so-slightly to prevent rotting. It’s important that the skin is dry when they’re packaged for storage. Sometimes I leave mine out for a day. Sometimes two. I just like them to feel dry – so if that involves flipping them over so the other side can dry, so be it. I mulch my garden heavily with straw and so the potatoes usually do just fine strewn out on that to soak in that summer sun.
3. Bring the potatoes inside and let them ‘cure’ in a single layer for 1-2 more days.
I usually just line a big section of my floor with newspaper and then lay all the potatoes out on that in a single layer for a more days to ensure their skin is tough enough for storage. You’ll see what I mean soon enough – a freshly dug potato has the most beautiful, tender skin. We need ours to be a bit more hardy than that. Much like a piece of bread left out on the counter, the potatoes will harden and toughen up just enough to make them durable.
4. Transfer the potatoes to a burlap sack.
I like burlap because it breathes, which is absolutely critical for storing potatoes. Potatoes that are stored in a plastic bag will simply rot – they need air circulation and something that can easily absorb any excess moisture. Burlap bags are perfect for this. I usually do about 30-40 pounds per burlap sack.
5. Transfer the burlap sack to a dark, cool climate (such as a basement, root cellar, garage, etc.)
Think of somewhere that won’t freeze but will stay steadily cool year round. For us, that means transferring the potatoes to my parents crawl space under their house. It’s dark and cool – perfect for potatoes. In our shop, they’d be susceptible to freezing: far too great of a risk to take with such a valuable staple crop!
6. Check the potatoes weekly.
Remove any rotting potatoes (which, hopefully, you won’t have!). If there is any rotting potatoes (you’ll smell ‘em!) then just remove them and wipe up any extra moisture that’s leaked out onto other potatoes. For storage potatoes, moisture means certain death. So keep it dry, baby.
Enjoy!
It’s so rewarding to grab a few pounds of potatoes for supper. Here we are, middle of January, and we’ve still got a lot of potatoes in storage! Now, remember what I said about how they loose their luster? Here’s what I mean:
Yes, they get a bit wrinkly.
And yes, they grow funky sprouts. Because that’s what potatoes do! But that’s okay. Just a quick flick off of the sprouts with my thumbnail…
… and they’re good as new.
Even though they’re a bit prune-esque this time of year, they still taste and cook up exactly the same. They’re tender, moist, and delicious.
This isn’t a task about perfection. This is a task about sustenance through the cold, barren, winter months.
I wouldn’t trade my ‘ol wrinkly potatoes for a million dollars. They’re right from my garden – a part of my farm!
At least until I eat them…
…and Amen.
You make it seem much less scary than any article I’ve ever read about storing potatoes! Thanks 🙂 And homegrown organic potatoes have to me sooo much cheaper than store bought! I can’t wait to grow my own!
Are you in a climate in which you can grow sweet potatoes? This year, we ate garden potatoes from June until October (first frost) and grew enough sweet potatoes to last us until June of next year. Sweet potatoes store much better/more easily. I am growing some storage potatoes next year but this has worked really well for us. just wanted to make the suggestion 🙂
I live in a place where we rarely have “hot and dry” weather (ahem, Ireland, ahem), where an August day and a February day can be pretty much the same. To cure my fresh-dug potatoes (and onions, too, for that matter) in such inclement weather, I have resorted to lighting a fire in the wood-burning stove and carefully setting the spuds around it on racks to cure for that first day in the radiant heat. Not as nice as natural sunshine, but in a pinch it works!
Love this information and I see many things we’ve done wrong over the years of planting potatoes! Do you save some of these potatoes from last years crop for your seed potatoes in the next planting season or do you purchase others?
I like to purchase fresh seed each year. Easiest way to stay disease free!
I get big produce boxes (the one’s with the sir holes) and store my potatoes, onions and garlic in them, single layer. I cut 2 boards to top support each box (I used some left over flooring boards) and stack them on top of each other. Storage is on the unheated tile floor in my lower level. Works great!
I recently read that to prevent potatoes from sprouting to store an apple with them. I’m hoping this helps!
I’ve never dried out the potatoes in the sun, just in the shade, and they last in my cool/cold basement just fine – up until time to replant the left-overs. Another thing my daughter and I have done for DECADES, is never to plant the potatoes under dirt – just lay them out on top of damp, fertile soil, and cover with about a foot or more of old/new/spoiled hay (whatever we can get free or cheap). I’ve tried straw, but it doesn’t seem to work. Be sure to visually inspect a few times during the growing season to make sure the seed potatoes are still covered well so the new potatoes don’t have green spots. The potato plants will come up just fine through all the hay, and after the plants die down in the fall, we just need to brush the hay away, and there are all the fine potatoes to pick up. No digging. And the earthworms love a hay mulch.
Hey! I was wondering what varieties you use? Because you mention drying them in the sun for a day or two? They wouldn’t sunburn (get green spots) ? I bring mine indoors to dry for a few days but found that any that had come uncovered in the mounds while growing had sunburned…
I’ve never had that problem – perhaps because it’s just for a day and not continual exposure?
It is a salient point, because we’re dealing with a species of nightshade and exposure to the sun can make the potatoes inedible, if not poisonous.
Perhaps its a zone issue? A “day in the sun” in Washington is going to be very different compared to one in Texas!
I was wondering about the sun issue too! I wasn’t sure if they could cure in the sun for a whole day, or if I needed to put them in the shade for the outdoor curing. Also excited to hear that you can store them in a crawlspace. That is what my plan is until we dig an actual root cellar, but I wasn’t really sure how well it would work. Good to know that is is a viable option! Thanks!
This article has perfect timing for me — I’ve been thinking of adding potatoes to my garden this year. Do you have problems with critters eating your potatoes while they’re growing? We’ve got lots of mice and voles in Virginia. We also have a dog who likes to hunt them, but I’m not sure how helpful that will be long-term.
Step 6. Did you have to go into the crawl space and search through bags weekly to look for a rotting potato? That seems awfully time consuming and grungy.
I enjoyed your tutorial on this subject.
Hello,
Just a thought about your storing potatoes, would a layer of salt in the root cellar below the bags of potatoes absorb excess moisture?
I have another question, not related to potatoes but to chickens. In 2013 I printed off a recipe from your blog for homemade chicken feed. I recently got 12 guinea meets and 12 Andalusian chickens. They are now 3 weeks old and they are very healthy. I was planning to mix up your chicken feed, but wasn’t sure if they are old enough to have it yet. Also, I am having trouble finding cracked corn, I find plenty of whole corn and coarse cornmeal but no cracked corn. Can I use coarse cornmeal. I even looked on azure standard.
Thank you,
Allison
I bet you could use coarse cornmeal – be worth a shot!
Our experience in Iowa leaving potatoes to dry in the sun results in a lot of green spots. We must dry them in a building or in a shady spot. So strange that you don’t get them, but good for you!
That’s reminds me of a time when I was as a kid, my dad got a huge haul of potatoes and apples from someone. After we’d eaten all we could and we didn’t know how to store them all, he dug a big hole in our backyard, lined it with straw and set the potatoes at one end and the Apples at the other end. He covered them with more straw and then buried them. When we needed some potatoes or Apple’s we went out back and dug them up. They were good until spring when the bugs came out, we still had a few apples we’d missed and I got a craving so I went digging rather wishful-like. They looked beautiful still when I found them, but they were full of worms by then.
I still marvel at my dad’s ingenuity, under that straw, dirt, and snow lay some of the tastiest apples and potatoes I’d ever eaten, and we enjoyed them all winter.
I grew up with the potatoes in the basement which was a dirt floors and walls. They kept good to late spring. My Father-in-law had the same but when he built a new house with cement, the potatoes did not keep as long even tho it was cool. As long as one does not have a high water table, the dirt stays dry. In Manitoba, Canada we had to light a small stove in the basement when the temp. dropped below 35 – 40 degrees F..
No one mentioned that the potatoes should not be dug up for storage until the tops have turned brown. This shows that they will not get any bigger and the skin has hardened for storage. If an early frost hit them before the tops turned brown, we would dig them all and put them in piles, and cover with straw. Then on a warm Saturday we would store them and some that were exposed to the frost would be discarded because it only takes 2 days for them to rot when and if they were frost bitten.
through other research that I have done on Root Cellars I have found that they recommend that you keep them at around 80% humidity or better and around 34 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit, I have done this for the past eight years and had very good success with keeping my potatoes . I was also informed that mixing apples and potatoes was not a good combination as the gases form one another will cause them to deteriorate faster.
On another note I am having problems keeping my carrots and will be trying your pail and sand method this coming fall. The first year I kept my carrots in a plastic tub with damp sawdust and vent holes in the lid, and had great success, The following year I tried the same approach and with in a couple of months all I had was a big decomposed orange glob. Thought that maybe I had to much moisture in the sawdust so this year attempted it again with drilling holes in the bottom of the tub to drain any excess moisture if there was any and low and behold with checking them a few weeks later they where again turning to orange globs, so we took them out of the sawdust and rinsed them of and stored them in plastic bags this helped a little but still had considerable looses.
RE: your carrots – I have had a lot of success storing carrots, we usually grown enough for a year and have had them last longer than that some years. When the carrots are harvested, we cut off the tops to about 1″ and then put them in plastic vegetable bags. Poke a lot of holes in the bags so that it doesn’t hold moisture, then store at the back of your fridge (I have an extra fridge in the basement). The only time I had a problem with this method of storage for carrots was when I didn’t poke enough holes in the bags so moisture formed. But usually it works great.
Hope this helps.
I’ve always heard to cure them in the shade, and I think this can be a pretty important point, because sun exposure can make potatoes poisonous (I’m just completely not sure how much sun though).
thank you the information but how can I use sawdust to store potatoes
Thanks ill be using your advice to fill my crawlspace with food. God bless you.