Potatoes will last longer if stored in one unexpected place (Image: Getty)
There’s nothing more satisfying in gardening than growing a bumper batch of potatoes and having a rich supply of hearty, homegrown and zero carbon footprint vegetables to work your way through each winter.
But a lot of people may not realise that there’s one way to store leftover potatoes through the winter without having to keep them in your kitchen at all.
If you find yourself with piles of home grown spuds and you don’t want them to go off, you can actually keep them in storage in your garden over winter – and they won’t spoil or go off and will be safe to eat when you want them.
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Farmers building an industrial sized clamp for their swedes to be stored (Image: Getty)
To store potatoes in your garden, you need to construct what’s known as a vegetable clamp.
It’s somewhat old fashioned, but sometimes the traditional methods are the best.
A home made vegetable clamp is a way of insulating and storing root vegetables such as potatoes, turnips, carrots, swedes and beetroots for use during the winter.
To make a clamp, find a dry and sheltered spot. Then, spread out a 20cm layer of clean straw and stack vegetables in it in a pyramid shape, with the necks of the potatoes facing out and the largest roots on the bottom.
Carefully cover the pyramid with more clean straw, around 20cm (8 inches), this will keep the potatoes free from frost.
If very cold weather is on the way, you can add another 15cm layer (6 in) of soil to further insulate the vegetables inside.
Then firm down the sides of the clamp and just keep an eye on it from time to time to protect from attacks by rodents like mice and rats.