How To Store Potatoes Once I've Cleaned Them

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Would you like your homegrown potatoes to stay fresh and last longer? Enquiry has shown there are all-time practices to harvesting and storing potatoes to ensure freshness, according the Oregon Country University Extension Service.

"Toughen upwardly potatoes for storage before harvest by not watering them much after mid-August," said Alvin Mosley, a retired OSU Extension Service potato researcher. "Permit the vines die all the way back before you harvest them."

Clean potatoes before storing them. Y'all need only brush off the soil on potatoes grown in coarse, sandy soil. Just if the soil is fine, viscid clay, your potatoes may demand washing. If so, be sure they are completely dry earlier placing them in storage. Minimize tuber exposure to light while cleaning.

Cure newly dug and cleaned potatoes for a week to x days in a nighttime, well-ventilated area with moderate temperatures and high humidity, and they will last longer. After curing, slowly drop the storage temperature to about twoscore to 45 degrees for table utilize. White potato tubers are virtually 80 percent water, depending on the variety, and then high storage humidity is recommended to prevent shriveling.

Storage temperatures below 45 degrees can cause carbohydrate buildup or sweetening. Fried products from such tubers are darker and oilier than those from tubers stored at higher temperature. While depression temperatures can 'sweeten' tubers, high temperatures oftentimes lead to excessive decay, shriveling and sprouting.

Sort out and cull injured and diseased spuds before storing them long-term. Store only healthy potatoes in well-ventilated containers. Eat the ones hit by your shovel and those with bad spots or disease in the start calendar month or so subsequently harvest, equally injured potatoes don't last. They also may spread spoilage or disease microorganisms to other potatoes.

Make sure to keep the storage area nighttime every bit calorie-free will turn tubers green and make them unfit for table utilize. The green colour is caused by chlorophyll, common to all dark-green plants. Chlorophyll is harmless only is frequently accompanied by high levels of a toxic alkaloid chosen solanine. While small quantities of solanine are harmless, likewise many greenish potatoes tin atomic number 82 to disease. Therefore, discard all potatoes with excessive greening.

Abound potatoes that go on well. Red potatoes usually don't continue as long equally xanthous or white varieties. Thin-skinned potatoes don't last as long in storage as those with thick skins, such equally russets. Late-maturing varieties almost always store amend than early on types.

"With proper storage, well-matured potatoes will stay in good condition for vii to eight months," Mosley said. When storage temperatures exceed 45 degrees, potatoes should keep for two to three months, only sprouting and shriveling may occur.

"Planting sprouted, shriveled tubers the post-obit bound is not recommended because of excess illness levels, particularly viruses," Mosley said. "Certified seed doesn't cost, it pays. Whenever possible, plant only certified, healthy seed potatoes."