What Are The Best Bins To Keep Potatoes & Onions

Don't have much absurd infinite for long-term storage of homegrown spuds? No trouble. Author Barbara Pleasant has a few creative ways to shop, and preserve, your potatoes.

Flawless potatoes that stay in the footing until the plants' tops wither are the best candidates for long-term storage. Curing or drying the potatoes for 7 to 10 days farther improves their storage potential. If you lot have clay soil, you may desire to lightly rinse off excess soil, then pat the spuds dry. Lay them out in a dim room and comprehend them with a cloth or towels to block out sunlight. During this fourth dimension, the skins volition dry, small wounds volition heal over, and new layers of skin will course where the outer layer peeled or rubbed off. Afterwards 3 or 4 days, plough the potatoes over and so all sides can dry out.

potato varieties

There are many perfect potatoes, including xanthous and pink fingerlings, all-purpose potatoes with blue or yellowish flesh, and waxy red potatoes for boiling or roasting. Photo © Kip Dawkins Photography, excerpted from Homegrown Pantry.

Potatoes and sweetness potatoes similar to spend their dormant catamenia in dry conditions, with some leeway in temperature. A cool, dry basement where temperatures range from l to 60° F (10 to 15° C) is platonic, especially for potatoes, which need to be protected from light. I oft store early on summertime potatoes in bins and boxes under my bed, because it's the best absurd, dry, nighttime identify in my house in late summer.

storing potatoes

If you don't have a cool basement, look for other cool, dark places to store potatoes, such equally an interior cupboard or nether your bed. Photo © Kip Dawkins Photography, excerpted from Homegrown Pantry.

Depending on the storage space bachelor to yous, y'all might use half-bushel baskets, pocket-size bins with loose-plumbing equipment lids (including depression-profile under-the-bed bins), cardboard boxes, an quondam dresser with partially opened drawers, or plastic or wooden crates to shop your dormant tubers and onion family crops. Here are a few more resourceful ideas for storage spaces.

Seven Ways to Store Potatoes

Place cured potatoes in a burlap handbag, constrict the pocketbook into a plastic storage bin left open a wee bit, and proceed in an unheated basement.
Line plastic laundry baskets with newspapers, with potatoes bundled in layers between more newspapers. Place the packed, covered baskets in an unheated garage.
In the basement, brand short towers of potatoes past stacking them between layers of open egg cartons. Cover the towers with cloth to protect the potatoes from light.
Place sorted potatoes in modest cloth shopping bags that have been lined with plastic bags, and store in a cold space nether the stairs. A like method: Sort different potatoes into paper bags, then place the numberless in milk crates to forestall bruising.
Apply an one-time dresser in a cool room or basement for storing potatoes in wintertime. Leave the drawers partially open for ventilation.
In a shady spot outdoors, place a tarp over the ground and cover it with an inch of loose straw. Pile on potatoes and cover with more straw, a 2d tarp, and a 10-inch blanket of leaves or straw.
Bury a garbage can horizontally so that its bottom half is at to the lowest degree 12 inches deep in the soil. Identify potatoes in the can with shredded paper or clean harbinger. Secure the lid with a bungee cord, and cover with an onetime blanket if needed to shade out sun.

cooked dehydrated potatoes

Cooked potatoes dry out quickly and relieve preparation fourth dimension when you need potatoes for soups or casseroles. Photo © Kip Dawkins Photography, excerpted from Homegrown Pantry.

If you accept little or no absurd storage, or more culls than keepers, you tin dry or can your potatoes for long-term storage. Freezing is not recommended, because the flesh and water separate as potatoes freeze and thaw, with unpleasantly mealy results.

Canning Potatoes

Pressure canning brings out the buttery notes in waxy potatoes, and yous tin process a batch at 12 pounds of force per unit area in 35 minutes. The pieces should be blanched before packing them into hot jars, only they demand not fit tightly. Fresh boiling water amended with citric acid (to preclude discoloration) is poured over the prepared potatoes before they go into the pressure level canner. Note: Potatoes are a depression-acrid food and cannot be canned in a water-bathroom or steam canner.

Drying Potatoes

Dehydrated potatoes are an essential ingredient in dry soup mixes, and dried potato slices brand excellent scalloped potatoes or potatoes au gratin. Using the culls from the master crop, I like to dry out at to the lowest degree one batch of potatoes each year. In spring when the fresh potatoes are gone, dried potatoes tin can salvage the day.

The virtually common way to dry potatoes is to dry slices. Slice well-scrubbed potatoes into uniform pieces and drop them into a bowl of cold h2o with a teaspoon of citric acid mixed in (to prevent discoloration). Bring a pot of water to a boil, and flinch the pieces until they are barely washed, about 5 minutes. Cool slightly before arranging on dehydrator trays. Dry white potato slices until difficult and opaque — your house will smell like baked potatoes!

Photo of Barbara Pleasant

Barbara Pleasant has written about organic gardening and cocky-sufficient living for more than 30 years. Her books include Starter Vegetable Gardens, The Complete Compost Gardening… See Bio