Potatoes in the attic are doing fine, but they can tell with their mysterious potato se

   Potatoes in the attic are doing fine, but they can tell with their mysterious potato senses that spring is around the corner; they’re starting to sprout.[ID: A metal colander full of medium-sized potatoes, slightly dirty. A few of them have small sprouts.]   I always wondered about root cellar storage. I know my mother used to store potatoes in a large bin in the cellar of our farmhouse. It worked, but I always wondered how on earth that area ever got cleaned up between one year’s storage and the next. I mean, it was cool and damp year round. There was an earthen floor, for Pete’s sake. Isn’t that a perfect recipe for mold spores, etc? I do not remember what she may have done, but my solution is entirely different.   Our attic is unheated. That means it stays very cold but above freezing in the moderate winters we have in western Maryland*. On the other hand, it gets very hot in summer. We’ve been successfully keeping potatoes, winter squash, apples, and some other long-keeping garden goodies up there during winter for years. It’s mid-February and my potatoes and one remaining butternut squash are doing very well. Once summer comes around, though, the daily hot temps up there will kill any mold/mildew that might have set in while crops were stored. So the mystery of what people with true root cellars do to keep them clean remains, but at least I have a useful system. * We’re in USDA growing zone 6, but you can drive an hour east and be in zone 7 or an hour west and be in zone 5 - so there’s a lot more variability than most areas. -- source link

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