Topic: storing potatoes

[Diana]

Got a bit of a problem - lots of lovely spuds to store, but not sure how best to do it.

I'd like to store them in the garage in paper sacks, but we get mice in the garage. Can I hang the sacks from the rafters?

I'd like to try a clamp, but the soil round here is little more than sand and stone.

Someone else must have the same problem - any ideas?

Thank you

D

[valmarg]

Mousetraps set with chocolate as the bait.

Paper/hessian sacks are the best to keep potatoes in.

With regard to hanging the sacks from the rafters, its amazing where mice can get, the little swines!!

Storing the potatoes in a clamp, I would say that your sandy soil is ideal for the purpose.

Either way, if you keep them in your garage, it's goin to be an enormous infestation  of mice that is going to eat the whole crop.

valmarg

[Robert_Brenchley]

I had a mouse which was regularly climbing the doorframe in my shed, getting on a little shelf above it, and nicking my chocolate biscuits. So I got mean and put poison on the shelf. A few days later I found a dead wood mouse. It would be; they're much more agile than house mice.

[Kepouros]

For years I`ve stored my potatoes and Bramley apples at the back of my nice cool garage.  Last year we came back from a late autumn holiday and I found that large holes had been gnawed in two of the potato sacks and the potatoes at the top badly chewed and covered in mouse droppings while a large number of the apples were in the same state.  I`ve set traps galore (humane ones, of course) and caught numerous short tailed field mice which I`ve released at the other end of the garden, but they keep getting back in.

I`m going for a clamp this year for the potatoes and I`d suggest the same in your case.  There is absolutely no reason why sandy soil should not be suitable for a clamp - I helped build several in my distant youth and sandy soil is far easier digging than clay.

[ThomsonAS]

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned a cat. This seems to do the trick for me!

[Merry Tiller]

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned a cat. This seems to do the trick for me!

Yes, it works for me too

[saddad]

I use the old fashioned mouse trap.. Peanut butter makes the most effective bait...(cant think of any other use for it....) got over thirty last winter... remember if you have caught a mouse but have no bait to reset it for its mate!
 ;D

[Robert_Brenchley]

I gave up on mousetraps because they kept disappearing, attached to various parts of some unfortunate rat's anatomy. Poison works for me.