I have heard about people digging a hole large enough to hold a big rubbermaid container. Use that for a root cellar and cover the top with hay bales or other 'thick' material for insulation.

I have a spare, unheated bedroom that I store squash in for several months.

So far, I haven't dedicated enough space to potatoes to need long term storage. They go in a bin in the kitchen and are eaten fairly quickly.

The moles ate my carrots..........'nuff said. But I can carrots purchased from local farms.

Try checking out some of the homesteading type forums for other storage ideas. Not just through GardenWeb, but Google it and see what you come up with. There's some mighty creative people out there!

Deanna

I started treating my carrots like parsnips,I leave them in the ground after cutting the top greens off and mulch heavily.We've had many a freeze/thaw this winter and lots of rain.Just dug some the other day.Yummy.
There were some losses to critters,about like usual gardening.
Have had sweet potatoes in the basement since I pulled them, around September.Perhaps too dry,I've lost 10%.

My potatoes were stored in the fridge and lasted many months.

dgkritch--it wasn't moles that ate your carrots. Moles are insectivores and eat earthworms and soil insects. They never eat plant material. But you do have voles, and they are enormously destructive. If you're interested in a control that really works, email me and I'll describe it.

I store my carrots, turnips and beets right in the garden where they grew under a thick layer of hay and they keep beautifully.

I trapped a vole in a rat trap. It has a shorter tail and is a bit smaller than the normal rat. They do destroy potatoes though, especially the sweet potatoes, where I lost all of them. Must have a zillion voles here, as I also lost hundreds of tulips and crocus bulbs over the years too.

I just talked to my MIL and she had the funniest solution to storing root crops, especially potatoes. She said that she just left them in the ground and covered them with seaweed that she gathered from our beach. Then she put some sand over that to add insulation and keep the seaweed from blowing away. It would work for us seeing that we live on the water, but for everyone else it might prove a little difficult! I can just imagine her hauling up buckets of seaweed to her garden - the access to our beach is down about 2 flights of steps (cliff)!

She said that she tried newspaper but it actually got moldy and that the seaweed worked better. I'm going to give it a shot on my small potato patch this year and I'll have to report back on whether or not it works :)

Bugs love potatoes too, so if they are left there in the ground,the bugs will be active too. Wireworms were a big problem here as most of my potatoes had small deep holes drilled it them from all sides, so cleaning and preparing them wasn't easy once they were riddled with small pin holes that went deep.

This is a quote from someone else in another forum. He is from Australia and talks about how they stored potatoes in the outback. Maybe 'kgardeninma'...you could take some ideas from him....

Quote....

Charcoal in with the spuds will help slow down the sprouting. I can vouch for it. Long, long, long ago when I was young, I spent some years in the Outback, where the trips to town for shopping (200 miles and more) were few and far between - like maybe twice a year. On each trip, food was bought in bulk - enough to feed 10 people, plus the occasional visitor.
Everything was kept in a special 'store room' which had no window. Potatoes were spread out onto the frame of an old wire bed so that they didn't touch each other, with pieces of charcoal here and there amongst them. Here, covered in dirt and in complete darkness for most of the time, they kept for months and months on end, and never a green one, never a sprout.
Believe me - it gets HOT in the Outback! Hot and DRY.
Potatoes should never be stored in the fridge. I forget the science of it (science is very forgettable for me!), but they undergo a chemical change making them more starchy. Or something.

end of quote.

Brenda

I have not noticed any flavor chnages in the potatoes I store in the fridge. Some are there for many months and never seem to get green or sprout. About the only thing that will happen is they seem to shrink a little and its evidenced by the wrinkles on the skins. On TV, Alton Brown stored them in sand, that was placed in a big plastic box and covered, the into the fridge. This seemed to help keep them, as well as carrots from drying out too much. I have to agree on charcoal too, as it can help to absorb odors and possible gasses that can spoil them. Here, I use an Ozonator that is battery powered and emits ozone into my refrigerator that reduces any odors as well as keeping things from getting moldy. Unlike tomatoes, potatoes don't lose much flavor when in the fridge. Tomatoes, will have a serious flavor change when refrigerated though. Kind of like comparing home grown to store bought flavor changes.