Here is our new potato rack, sometimes called an orchard rack, put to good use this weekend. Historically racks like these were used to store “keeper” crops such as apples, winter squash, onions and potatoes. The drawers are slatted to ensure good air circulation, and they slide out for easy access. We made room in our fruit cellar for ours which will be convenient when we need potatoes for dinner. Unfortunately the rack is almost full already and we still have just as many potatoes yet to store plus my onions and garlic. We are however going to store the remaining potatoes in the wine cellar in wooden crates. We will have to see which method works best.
We will pile them up a bit but not too much to make sure there is good air circulation. We looked into the ‘bin’ kind of storage but thought the openness of this one would be better. We will see!
Can you pile the potatoes two or three layers thick.
I am looking into doing the same thing, I was wondering which method worked out better for you. Right now we store ours in a wooden box but I am looking into building an orchard rack.
Hi there,
after a full winter, we found that the orchard rack did a much better job. While some potoatoes sprouted earlier, the later season varieties like Yukon Gold and German Butterball were still firm in May with only small signs of sprouting in the open orchard racks. We plan on storing all our potatoes that way next year. Hope that helps.
I’m really interested in your potato storage rack . Would you please connect with me.
Hi Koara,
Our storage rack works very well, we are quite pleased with it. We purchased in through Veseys. It is actually called an Orchard Rack. Ours is the six shelf version. It comes 90% assembled, easy enough to put together — in fact my at the time 13 year old finished building ours.
Sharon