How to Harvest and Store Your Potatoes

After digging up my potatoes, I had to find a place to let them cure for the night.  This poses a problem, because they need to be in cool, dark place with higher humidity, and we have neither a basement nor a cold storage area, and our crawlspace isn't exactly ideal in terms of access or use, so I had to figure out what to do with my bounty.  We do have a laundry area and an unheated pantry room off of our garage, so I came up with a kind of makeshift solution.

I spread newspaper across the top of my washing machine, then laid the potatoes out in a single layer, making sure that none were touching each other.  I then covered them completely with another layer of newspaper to keep out light but still allow air circulation.  I let them sit out all night to cure and dry out a bit.

The next day, at the grocery store, I nabbed a paper bag from a checkout lane and brought it home.  I then put all of the potatoes in the paper bag and loosely folded the top closed.  I placed them on the shelf in our pantry room to continue curing.  I labeled them with the date of harvest so that I could keep track of the time that's passed.  In about a week, I'll move them to a bin in the fridge.

In an ideal world, I would have a cold storage area in my basement, with large lidded storage tubs drilled with small air holes and filled with sand or sawdust for all of my root veggies.  Then I could just grow veggies in the summer and store them for the rest of the year.  Someday...!  But for now, this system will work just fine.  Life's really about making the most of what you already have anyway!