Storing Potatoes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 43, 19 April 1940, Page 45

Storing Potatoes

Dear Aunt Daisy, Please will you ask your Vegetable Expert Friend what are the best methods of storing potatoes; and how long can they be kept?-J.N.S. (Te Puke) Well, my Vegetable Friend tells me that the first important point is that the potatoes must be thoroughly ripe and matured before they are dug. He said that they are best stored out of doors, and not inside; and that they must be kept from light. Stack them up in a conical-shaped mound on a raised piece of ground, which slopes in such a way that water cannot lie under the potatoes. Cover them over, not with sacks, but with rushes or sticks, so that the rain will run down them, and not soak into the potatoes. It is not best to cover them with sacks, nor with earth, either, although in cold countries this has to be done to keep the potatoes from frost. Potatoes should keep like this for twelve months.

Then we had a little "consultation" over the air on the subject, and here is an extract from a letter from a Link in the Daisy Chain: "TI should like to tell what my tamily used to do regarding the storage of potatoes. They used to grow enough potatoes to do the family a whole year, and this is the way they were stored. The potatoes were left in the ground until the tops (as the upper growth is called), died off. We had a special corner in the shed railed off to prevent the potatoes scattering, as they were never put into bags, but simply tipped out of the containers into a heap, and then covered with pig fern (to use a farm term). You no doubt have seen it growing on farms, Aunt Daisy, mostly hilly farms; and then put a sack or two on top of the fern. Tell them to examine the heap now and again, and remove any blighted ones; also rub off any shoots. My people always grew the Maori Chief potato, and had good ground-blighted ones were very rare. We always had pumpkins stored, too. While the pumpkin was growing, and of course getting heavier, my Dad would put under each pumpkin a good layer of dried hay, and gradually turn the pumpkin to the sun to ripen it thoroughly all round. They, too, would be left out in the garden until the leaves and vines had died off. They should be handled carefully, and placed in storage, something similar to potatoes, only instead of using fern on top, one may use hay for the pumpkins, if preferred. Place the hay on the floor, then arrange the pumpkins on top of it. Onions were pulled, and left on the ground to dry, and when the tops became, shall we say "crackly," they were plaited into bunches and hung on hooks attached to the rafters in the shed.-‘Country Pumpkin " Still another listener says: "My husband has always stored the potatoes that we get from our garden (and that is enough to last till December each year)-with lime, just sprinkled over each layer of potatoes. We find they keep quite well. Of course, after they are out of the ground, they must be well dried in the air, but we have never had any of them go bad, and we have done this now for six years."-"A Listener of 2ZB."