I store my potatoes and yams in a paper bag in a simple pink tin in the corner of my counter. The paper bag prevents light getting to the potatoes and yams; thus helps to prevent buds from forming. Light hitting the potatoes is what causes buds to form (from what I have read).

I store mine in a paper bag under my sink. Exposure to light causes greening and the potato will change in taste and be unfit for eating. Sprouting is a result of temperatures in excess of 65F so to prevent sprouting you want to keep them cool. Cool and dark :-)

I like kculbers' method. I know from sad experience that potatoes will still bud in the dark, so keeping them out where you see them and use them is a good idea. But light will make potatoes turn green under the skin. And room temperature is better than refrigerating--refrigerated potatoes can develop a sweet taste from the starch converting to sugar.

My ideal solution is to score a cheap wine fridge or dorm fridge just for potato storage. Storing them at 45-50 degrees helps them last a long time without getting the weird sweet taste. A high-tech root cellar.

Some green on a potato is no reason to throw it away.

From the USDA:

According to the University of Idaho Cooperative Extension Service, "Potato tubers are specialized stems of a potato plant, and tubers that are exposed to light, will naturally turn green. The green is nothing more than chlorophyll, a harmless compound found in all green plants.

However, when potato tubers turn green there is usually an increase in a glycoalkoloid compound called solanine. Consequently, it is important to store potatoes in the absence of light to prevent greening. Tubers with a high concentration of solanine will taste bitter, and can be harmful if eaten in large quantities. To be safe, it is best to not eat the green part of tubers." You do not need to discard green potatoes. Just peel the skins, shoots and any green color; that is where the solanines concentrate.

https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Are-green-potatoes-dangerous

Sprouting doesn't change the taste of potatoes - greening does. It's easy to rub off any sprouts that may appear but a lot harder to get rid of the green if you are dealing with the smaller, thin skinned types like Yukon Golds.

I keep mine in the bottom of my prep fridge. I don't use a lot of potatoes, and they only keep in my kitchen for a few days without chilling. I tried during the Winter because I was overloaded with cooking projects and thought the relative cool and moisture of our very rainy Winter would allow it. It worked fine for apples, oranges, artichokes... The potatoes might have lasted an extra day but they didn't like it at all. If you're going to chill potatoes, however, it's important to make sure they're dry. They're wet enough inside. If they're damp, they might mold or go squishy.

We buy only enough to last a week. Keep them in a paper bag on our counters.

In a basket on the floor of the pantry.

I have cloth vegetable bags and built in bins on my pantry door. I use one for onions and one for potatoes. With two of us I limit how many onions and potatoes I buy. I only buy what I need for the week. With potatoes I usually buy the small bag of little potatoes. I don't have the the boys at home to eat 5lbs at a sitting.

I store them in a basket in the dark pantry.

Thanks, all. Sounds like in a basket or bag and not in the fridge is the way to go.

I've never kept them in the fridge. I used to have a lidded basket in the pantry that I would line with paper grocery bag to aid in darkness - some light would get in around the weaving - but find we don't really need potatoes in bulk. I bought a meals worth of fingerlings to roast a couple of weeks ago, and a few yukon gold for a recipe this last week. They were used within a couple of days and stayed on my counter.

My preferred potato is russet and I have one of these bins now (Ama**n) and have it in my cool dark garage. It never gets particularly warm or freezing out there and it works just great - now that I don't buy those big bags at Costco any longer ;)

DH would usually prefer rice. I like rice fine, but don't ever try to take my garlic mashed potatoes away from me....

I never store potatoes in the fridge as the cold can also make them turn black inside when they are cooked due to the build up of sugars.

As DH is on a ”minimal starch” diet I rarely buy potatoes any more, but when I do they live in a cloth bag in a wire hanging basket in the kitchen.

If I only bought enough potatoes for a week, I wouldn't have one when I needed it. I usually buy 3 or a pound, whichever is less, and hope to use them before they sprout or go soft. Yes, they will sprout in the fridge. They won't stay nice at room temp in my kitchen for a full week, but I do see how it might work fine in a cooler place.

I remember buying regular white potatoes or russets and they'd be black in the middle. And when cooked they turned grey. The black is being stored too cold in the stores.

I buy 10-lb bag as it's cheaper than a 5 lb. Even if some turn soft and wrinkly it's cheaper to throw them away than buy a 5-lb.

They're on the floor in my spare bedroom, which is the coolest room.

When I run out of homegrown potatoes, I buy the 10 pound bags, although more commonly they are 8 pounds here. I like potatoes and use quite a few of them and they seldom go bad. My homegrown ones do tend to sprout after they've been in storage for several months.

I have a back room that I use for storage. It's unheated, but doesn't freeze and is ideal for the storage of onions, potatoes, winter squash like butternut, garlic heads, etc. I don't refrigerate potatoes since I tried once and they got that weird sweet flavor that I do not like.

My homegrown potatoes get dug in August and September and will last into February or March in storage. When they start to sprout I sort them out, those are my seed potatoes for the next garden. I haven't had to buy seed potatoes for several years now, garlic either, I just set aside enough of what I've grown to plant next year.

Annie

I store potatoes in a wire basket hanging on the wall in my kitchen. This is a three-tiered basket, and I put garlic in the top tier, onions in the second, and potatoes at the bottom. Then I hang aprons over the baskets so that they are protected from light.

I do not use all that many potatoes - we eat rice more often than potatoes, and rice is much easier to store and cook.

In the freezer with all the rest of the frozen food. We don't buy whole potatoes anymore due to dietary restrictions, but we keep a box or two of frozen stuff for those times when logic, need, and the diet are in conflict.

Would storing in the basement be ok? The temp is usually 65-70 down there, it's the coolest place in the house. I don't know what the humidity is, though -- I don't think it's high but I'm not sure.

We’ve always kept potatoes in the fridge. Once we bought our first SubZero (in 1990), we’ve not had a problem with sprouting, or interior blackening of the spuds. The SZ we bought for the home we moved to in 2016, does an even better job of keeping all fruits and veggies fresh for a very long time.

mxk, your basement should be good. Ideally you need a cool (not fridge cold), humid and dark place. An unheated basement sounds good. My potatoes are in the pantry that is definitely more dry than humid but it works fine. I well remember my grandmother kept a lot of potatoes in a root cellar.

I have some old wire baskets, I think I'll store them in the basement in those. I usually buy a 3-5 lb bag at a time of the gold or redskins and the russets, I like to always have potatoes on hand.

I planted fingerlings in the vegetable garden this year -- I think I ended up with 12 plants out of a small box of seed potatoes. How long will freshly dug potatoes keep? Can I just dig what I need at any given time and leave the rest until ground freeze (i.e. leave in place to use as needed but be sure to dig them all before ground freeze)?

No clue about freshly dug but am guessing someone here will know. In the meantime, this might help.

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/tips-keeping-harvested-potatoes-fresh

^^ That link is helpful, thanks! Man I'd love to have a root cellar...

mxk, my Grandpa used to tell me that the best place to store potatoes was in the ground. The problem arises when we have a wet fall and the ground stays wet, then the potatoes can rot. As long as it stays dry and doesn't freeze, your potatoes can stay in the ground. Some people think that it makes the skins thicker or tougher, I haven't noticed that. The problem that arises for me is that the plant dies and then, if I don't dig the potatoes, it's hard to find the "hill" to dig them up later. Plus,

Storage times depend on the variety of potato. Some, like Red Pontiac, store for several months. Fingerlings seem to sprout more quickly for me and their skins are thinner and more fragile, so I have more bad spots develop. Again, there are many varieties of fingerling potatoes, so if you are growing a different variety than I do, you may have different experiences.

Because Michigan's growing season is so short and fingerlings are a late season potato, they require between 90 and 110 days to mature. If I plant the end of May, after frost danger is past, they aren't ready to dig until mid-September anyway. I dig hills as I need them for a couple of weeks, but by the first part of October I dig them all and put them into storage.

I grow some of the earlier types, but we usually eat those throughout the season when they are ready, so I'm not trying to store them for long periods during warmer weather. This year I planted Kennebec, Red Pontiac, Uukon Gold, French Fingerling, Adirondack Red and Adirondack Blue so I will have fresh potatoes thoughout the season. I planted the Pontiac and the fingerlings about mid May because the fingerlings take so long and I wanted the Pontiacs for "new potatoes". I'll be digging the first small Pontiacs probably the first part of August.

Annie

annie (and others), I was told long ago that you shouldn't wash the potatoes that you are storing... only knock off some dirt. What do you do?

CA Kate z9: I have also heard that.

I never wash them until ready to use. I always buy potatoes individually and they can look fairly clean. However, they need washing, especially russets.

I also never wash potatoes prior to storage. If they are my own, I try to dig them when it's dry and leave them to "cure" in the pole barn for a week or so, then dust them off and store them. I don't cure them in the sun because they can turn green and I usually toss a tarp over them while they are curing just to discourage birds and animals from contaminating them. Curing them lets small marks "heal" and lets the skins get a little tougher so they store longer. I then put them into milk crates and stack them up to store.

Some potatoes have thinner skins, like the fingerlings, and won't store for a long time. Others, like Kennebec, will store for several months.

I wash them when I'm going to use them and I try to use the more fragile ones first.

Annie

I know I'm an outlier, and my potatoes come pretty clean (from the farm the come same as from a store), but what earth my be left on them stays on them, and I also don't clean them until ready to use. And they all hold several months in the fridge. :)

I’ve had this book for years. Good recipes and whatever else one might want to know regarding potatoes. Nice photos, too.

Husband built cabinets in the pantry that pull out (instead of hinges) and each pull-out has different sized pull-out bins and drawer. After the potatoes are cured and sorted they go into brown paper bags and into a big bin, (maybe 50 lbs.) Seed potatoes are bagged and labeled and stored in a box. There's a window in the pantry and from Oct to May I have a walk-in cooler, controlled by opening/closing the window. Pretty basic but my spuds and garlic keep until early May.

Scab is our enemy. We've had the best luck with russets, fingerlings and blues. The russets keep the best, but a couple of the fingerlings lasted almost as long. I keep searching for a yellow and a red potato but they all get scab even though we use plenty of sulfur.

Katie! I'm glad to see you here!

I have problems with scab on red potatoes when I plant them here at the house but not at the farm. No matter what I did, the potatoes here in my much more convenient back yard got scab but the ones at the farm garden do not, or at least haven't yet. The extension service tells me that it is a bacteria that lives in the ground, maybe forever but at least for many years. Acidic soil mitigates it somewhat, but won't alleviate it, so I guess I just won't plant potatoes here. Garlic took that spot and it seems to be fine.

Annie

Annie (good to be here!)....my garden is in the middle of a pine forest. You'd think the soil would be acidic enough, lol.

Well, I live on the Christmas tree farm and my potatoes were about 5 feet from the tree line, but that didn't stop the scab either, LOL. And, oddly enough, the gardens are the farm have been regularly composted and the soil is rich, dark and loamy, not acidic at all. Yet the potatoes grow there nicely. I just planted asparagus and garlic and horseradish at the house with the bacteria and the potatoes stay at the farm. Now watch, I probably jinxed myself and I'll be unhappy when I dig the potatoes!

Annie

I get 3 or 4 kilos at a time for maincrop and 1 kilo for new. Stored in a bin in a cupboard.

I store both russet and sweet in my partly underground garage. They do great there, onions and apples too.

Sue

look who i found cruising around.. lol..

on the basement floor if you have one... or even better.. a basement closet... the cement floor should be around 60 ish in our MI ...

probably not in a crawlspace or MI basement.... unless you keep them off the soil...

or.... i have a coolish closet on the lower level of the tri level....

dark and cool keeps them from greening up...

ken

Another potato post with lots of good info, especially the different varieties of potatoes, didn't know that -- thanks, all!

I bought a fresh bag of gold potatoes and set them in a wire basket on the floor in the basement. I'll see how they do. The onions and shallots (and DH's beer) are still in the fridge.

Update: I've stopped storing them in the fridge, have been storing them in the basement in a wire basket since I originally posted a few months, and they are all keeping quite well -- the russetts/idahos are remaining starchy and none are spoiling as quickly.

I slice thin with the FP ... then boil them for three minutes; rinse and dry and place on a lined cookie sheet in a single layer and freeze. Once frozen, transfer to a zip bag and store them frozen ...