Potato storage failure :( open to ideas

[thistlebloom]

Last years potato harvest has been severely decimated by storage failure. I'm so disappointed!

I was confident in the main storage box that I've used for several years successfully, and less confident in the two new 32/40? gallon trashcans
that I needed for the extra room.

My main storage is a double walled plastic tool type box, like the type that goes in a pickup, and can hold about 300# of potatoes. It has 2" insulation everywhere but the lid. I store my spuds by size and variety in cardboard boxes and paper grocery bags inside. Then I cover all of that with fat sheets of newspaper, close the lid and layer with more 2"foam board insulation and a thick packing blanket over all. It has worked beautifully until this year.

The two trashcans were insulated with 2 layers of cardboard and then bubble wrap, and the potatoes were stored in paper bags until I ran out, then I used plastic grocery bags.

The plastic bags were the first big mistake. After the first bout of zero degree weather I had some frozen potatoes mixed in the bags. (And that was a weird thing too, because the potatoes seemed to be frozen randomly, with no pattern as to size of potato or location in the bag.)

I used the potatoes in the cans, having to discard at least half of spuds in the second one.

Monday I opened my main box with fear and trepidation and discovered the same sad scene.
Mushy, soft potatoes, and many that were sporting big moldy patches.

I salvaged about 60 to 70 pounds out of that one.

So, in the cans I think poor insulation, and plastic bagging led to the rot.

In the main box, freezing probably had some effect, but I think it was mostly too much humidity in there.
In past years I would have been opening that box up about once a week to get the weeks potatoes for the kitchen, so there was at least some air exchange, and I was also on the lookout for any spoiling. This year it stayed closed up once the freezing weather started.

I was wondering if this year, along with better insulation of course, if I layered the potatoes with peat or shavings if that would help.

(I just said if three times in one sentence! )

Do you guys have any ideas? What do you who live in freezing climates use?

 

[journey11]

I always thought they needed air circulation? I'm gonna have to find my root cellaring book and see what they recommend... I keep mine in wooden crates in the basement. Sounds like yours are in the garage and you have to worry about the temp? I would think adding peat would help mimic storage in the ground.

Maybe your cans needed sterilized first to kill off any molds or disease from last year's potato crop?

Or maybe the skins weren't cured enough when you put them away?

Or maybe they had caught some disease while in the garden?

So sorry you lost all that hard work!

ETA: One problem I run into with my basement storage is that it is a little too warm and dry and my potatoes start to shrivel around January. Until DH builds me that cold closet he promised me, I have thought of digging a pit in the hillside and burying a trashcan down in it to store potatoes for winter. That was one idea I got from the book Root Cellaring by Mike and Nancy Bubel. If you can find that at your local library, it is wealth of info on what conditions are best for storing each and every veggie you can think of categorically.

 

[Carol Dee]

We also had an epic fail! The potatoes (and there where a lot of them this harvest.) where put into milk crates with layers of newspaper. These where stored in what we thought was a cool place that would not freeze. The basement stairwell from the side yard. WRONG. They all froze solid. So they went to mush as they thawed. Those we kept in a cabinet on an outside wall sprouted before we got them used. SO none kept well if at all. I will be watching this thread for helpful suggestions, too.

 

[Carol Dee]

Journey. The frost went 5 foot deep this year. So I am thinking a trash can deep would still all freeze.

 

[thistlebloom]

Thanks journey! I have the Bubels book on root cellaring, I had thought about the buried trash can idea too. I don't have any hillsides, but I suppose you could mimic one with a mound of soil...

I think you're right on the air circulation, and that was probably a primary issue with the rot. I probably wouldn't have lost so many if I had gone through periodically and tossed the questionable ones also.

 

[journey11]

Journey. The frost went 5 foot deep this year. So I am thinking a trash can deep would still all freeze.

Wow! I sometimes forget how much harsher the winters are where you guys live. Our frost line (for building purposes or setting posts) is at 18" here and seldom actually reaches that far in a typical winter. Although this winter I'm sure it could have.

ETA: Correction...for the extreme, it is considered 30" here.

I would think the peat or saw dust you'd pack the potatoes in with those buried trash cans would add insulation though.

 

[thistlebloom]

Oh, that's too bad Carol Dee! It's such a disappointment when you grow something and count on it to last through the winter.

Steve stores his carrots in a pit in his yard, maybe he'll contribute about the success rate he has with that in a very cold winter.

I wondered about the frost depth too Carol Dee, ours is generally less than 4 feet.

 

[NwMtGardener]

Agh, that sucks Kristi and Carol! I also had a small storage failure this year, small in that I only lost a few potatoes, onions and apples. I stocked up on these things locally in the fall (they weren't from my garden) and didn't get all of them processed, used up or frozen. So I decided to try a new method, for me. I took our Coleman cooler, tucked it behind the house where it never gets any sun. I thought it would stay more consistently cold there, but hopefully not completely frozen, since it was right alongside the house. I also put a large jug of water inside the cooler, to help regulate temps even more. With our first brutal cold snap in early December, I checked and everything was frozen solid. :/ Still, it wasn't the absolute end of the world, I used almost all the onions, just stuck them in the freezer in the house. I also used most of the apples even though they were frozen solid, just thawed them and baked some apple crisps. The potatoes were toast though. It made me realize that even if I grew more stuff in my garden, I wouldn't have a way to store anything safely through the winter unless we buy a backup freezer and process everything into that, like hashbrowns. Or get a pressure canner and can our potatoes. (Don't they need a pressure canner?)

It's one of the reasons I wanted to start growing quinoa this year. Dry grain I could easily store. Potatoes, not so much!

 

[Smart Red]

My spuds are getting ready for spring. Seems like no matter how well I store them, they somehow know when the weather turns and they start to sprout. I can still cut up the few I have, but they are wrinkled and sprouting. Mine are stored in the farthest corner of the basement along an outside wall. They are surrounded by insulation and covered with thick shipping tarps to keep them dark. I have them in cardboard boxes, brown grocery bags, and open milk crates -- no plastic there.

It isn't quite as cold and recommended, but the insulation makes the space pretty durned cool a space for overwintering my veggies and dahlia tubers.

By the way, our 'normal' frost level is just above 4 feet, but it was 5-6 feet all over this winter and as low as 7-8 feet in some places. That explains why we had all the City water pipes freezing this year -- they are down at the five foot level.

 

[digitS']

The winters here have not been very cold, on average, in recent years. It was several years ago that it went down to a minus 15 and I think that was the year I had the giant, 2 handle bucket upside down on the carrot pit. So, it had 8" of soil and then that big bucket, filled with maybe 24" of dry leaves/pine needles. More leaves were spread out around it. The carrots didn't freeze.

I have wondered if my potatoes would do okay in the pit but I'm pretty sure I'd need better ideas than the pit for what I'm harvesting in August.

I'm sorry you have lost so many, Thistle'. Mine had better be all gone right after New Year's Day. And yet, the dahlias are still just fine down there. They are also in peat moss and the potatoes were not.

I think that the peat moss would help and don't think it would hurt. The temperature is probably very wrong and they would be growing too early, however.

Thistle', there is an Idaho potato storage specialist named Nora Olsen. If you do a Google search you may find information that would be of help. She is with the extension service and you might think that she should be easy to talk to but she is kinda at the top in spud research and, since it is Idaho, probably only talks to the governor.

Steve