How to properly store potatoes in a city apartment?

Probably every person asked himself the question of how to store potatoes in an apartment. Of course, the ideal option would be to store potatoes in a cellar, but even in urban housing conditions you can find a place for root vegetables.

Preparation for storage

If the potatoes were collected on your own plot, then after harvesting the tubers are recommended to be dried in the sun for several hours. Firstly, this will significantly reduce the risk of their subsequent rotting, and secondly, the stuck earth will be separated much easier. When choosing potatoes in a store, you should remember that they should be medium in size and without any damage or disease visible to the naked eye. Later varieties of potatoes are optimal for storage, and those that ripen early can last until November - early December at most.

Potatoes are sorted, damaged tubers are used for food first, since they will not survive long-term home storage. You should not wash the potatoes before storing them; you just need to shake off the stuck soil from the tubers.

How to store?

It is recommended to give the potatoes a kind of preventative period for a couple of weeks to a month, during which all previously undetected diseases usually appear. During this period, the tubers should be stored in a well-ventilated place and inspected regularly.

Storing potatoes requires good ventilation, so you can pack potatoes either in fabric bags or in boxes with holes.You should not use polyethylene - the tubers in it quickly become damp, mold and rot. For the same reason, it is not recommended to keep the tubers in the refrigerator for a long time. To protect against all kinds of pests, it is recommended to put aromatic herbs in a bag or box for storing potatoes - rowan leaves or sedum, twigs of wormwood, etc.

At what temperature and humidity should potatoes be stored?

Like many other vegetables, potatoes do not like heat. It should only be stored in a cool place as far as possible from heating appliances. At home, this may be an unheated balcony or loggia, pantry, hallway, but not a refrigerator.

At what temperature should potatoes be stored? Although it should be quite low (5-6 degrees), it still should not fall below zero.

To absorb accumulated moisture, potatoes are laid out with thoroughly dried straw, sawdust, or beets are placed with them. But storing potatoes with other vegetables is not advisable.

Why is low potato storage temperature so important? With it, all life processes in tubers slow down. Once there is strong warming, the potatoes will begin to sprout, their respiration will become more intense, as a result of which the tubers will lose moisture and become flabby. Therefore, it is imperative to maintain optimal storage conditions at home – 3-4 degrees Celsius and humidity within 85-90%.

Advice

It will be easier to maintain comfortable temperature conditions during storage if you put a thermometer in the box with it.

How to store potatoes on the balcony in winter

If the balcony is unheated, then in severe cold weather outside the frost can reach the potatoes.How to properly store potatoes in this case? To prevent it from freezing, bags or boxes can be wrapped in an old cotton blanket. Some people warm up the boxes with tubers with electric lamps or a hairdryer. The latter not only warms the potatoes, but also provides additional ventilation.

If severe frosts occur in the region for a couple of days throughout the winter, then such storage of potatoes is, of course, possible. But if the cold lasts for months, these methods will be uneconomical.

Potato storage box

The best way to store potatoes on the balcony in winter is to build double-layer containers for them. To do this, you need two boxes of different sizes, where one of them should be at least 15-20 cm smaller than the second in length, width and height. At the bottom of a larger box, either sawdust or even any artificial insulation, except mineral wool, should be poured, since its small particles can get into the potatoes. Next, a smaller box is placed inside; the gaps between the walls of the two boxes are sealed with the same sawdust or other insulation. The top of the structure is covered with an old blanket or just a thick cloth. In such boxes, storing potatoes is possible even when exposed to frost of 10-15 degrees.

Other conditions

It is equally important that the tubers are not exposed to light - in addition to the fact that this causes them to begin to sprout, they also produce the toxic substance solanine, the appearance of which is easy to notice - the potatoes begin to turn green. You shouldn’t throw away the entire potato because of this, but you will need to cut off the green layer before eating it.

At the end of winter - beginning of spring, potatoes often begin to sprout eyes.And so that all the nutrients from the tubers do not go into them, these sprouts must be removed.

Advice

Mint is considered an effective remedy against potato sprouting during storage - its dry leaves are poured into bags or boxes with tubers.

It is better to store potatoes in the apartment in small portions. Then it will be much more convenient to inspect the potatoes for safety, and if they go bad in one box, the rest will not suffer.

Each potato storage box should be located at least on a slight elevation from the floor (15-20 cm), and should not be pushed close to the walls.

Can it be stored in the refrigerator?

Small stocks of potatoes are often sent to refrigerator drawers. As a rule, they are quickly eaten, and nothing has time to happen to the tubers. But is it permissible to store potatoes in the refrigerator for a long time? No no no. There are several reasons for this.

• Too much space will be taken up in the refrigerator; there simply won’t be any space left for other products.
• The temperature in the refrigerator is usually below 5-6 degrees, and under these conditions, potato starch breaks down into sugars, and the potatoes become sweet. Not fatal, but not pleasant.
• The refrigerator is a closed space. Even though it is opened several times a day, this does not provide adequate ventilation and the potatoes quickly become soggy.

As you can see, storing potatoes in an apartment is not at all difficult. The main thing is to create suitable conditions for it and regularly sort it out. Even if at first glance the tubers look healthy, but an unpleasant odor emanates from the box, and small midges fly around it - this is a sure sign that not everything is in order with the potatoes and they need to be examined more carefully.