I grew a really great crop of potatoes on my allotment this year. Is it okay to leave them in the ground and dig them up as needed? Fiona H, Cork
The first thing to bear in mind is that only maincrop varieties of potatoes are suitable for storing over winter. So if yours are what’s known as an early variety, then they needed to be eaten soon after they were ready to harvest. Maincrop varieties are much longer lasting by comparison; their flavour and texture often improves with storage as the starchy sugars within the tubers ripen. A classic example is the variety known as Golden Wonder, famed for its tastiness after many months in winter storage.
Technically, it’s okay to leave maincrop potatoes in the ground until you want to use them so long as you’ve cut down and removed the leafy stems – or haulms, as they are known. But it’s a gamble that runs the risk of the tubers slowly succumbing to rot as a result of poorly drained soil conditions (remember last winter’s record rainfall) as well as falling victim to slug and rodent damage.
For this reason, most kitchen gardeners prefer to lift their crop and store it above ground in a cool, dark, dryish, well-ventilated spot. Traditionally this was done by making what’s known as a potato clamp, where the potatoes are stored between thick layers of straw to protect them from frost and light (exposure to the former causes them to rot; exposure to the latter causes them to green-up and then become inedible as a result of the toxic chemical called solanine that’s produced in the tuber).
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The advantage of a potato clamp is that it can be made outdoors and offers good climatic conditions ideal for storage, but the disadvantage is that it still leaves your crop vulnerable to damage from rodents.
A cool, dark, frost-proof garden shed is a better bet, especially if you can get your hands on a wooden pallet on which to store the tubers, which will help to keep them dry and well ventilated. Hessian sacks or meshed laundry baskets are also good, while an old, disused fridge or chest freezer can also work very well and has the advantage of being fully rodent-proof. Just make sure to first discard any tubers that look damaged or show signs of rot as these could spoil the crop. It’s also a good idea to take suitable precautions against rodents, which have an uncanny ability to gain access through the tiniest gaps.
