cantata wrote:
First off, the apples, what sort of apples were those your friends grandpa was growing? There's so many different types of apples, my mother has bunch of appletrees, around dozen or so and each one is different variety. There's two at least which we call winter apples, they ripen the last but they wont go bad, those things can last for months upon months if they're stored in a cool place safe from sunlight.... Most market varieties seem to be the quickly ripening types which are of course "better business" as they grow faster. There's a huge difference there, some varieties rot in very soon after picking and others last for ages. Its all about the variety, also home grown apples don't usually have any kind of chemical kung fu done on them which might ruin them.

And then potatoes, there's a same thing about the variety, there's many different types... But do you remember HOW the potatoes were then your friends grandpa stored them? I bet they were still covered in dirt, weren't they? Washed potatoes never last that long as unwashed ones. I'm not entirely sure how it works but it seems that as long as there's dirt on the potaotes, "they think" they're still in the ground and do not go bad. Also the right way to store them is in cool place, away from sunlight. A cellar below ground level is the best place, if you think of it, the potatoes are pretty much as they were, covered in dirt, below ground in cold and dark. That's how they last.

The same pretty much applied for onions, carrots and so on.... Herbs will last for ages when dried and lettuce is one of the few things that goes bad no matter what. I would say that nearly everything edible that grows below ground can be stored for a very long time when you do it properly. Supermarket food is usually completely different, at least it was so in Ireland where most of the typical food was "factory made" market stuff, grown too quickly with questionable methods to make lot of money.... Here's one more thing which is nice about Finland, locally grown food is very easy to find. We're not that far away from the rural agricultural society so some of its good sides are still here. Same with gardening supplies, easy to find and relatively cheap as gardening is very popular. Makes life nice for any survivalist.

It can be much older than it looks too, stored in nitrogen rooms for weeks or more, it couldve come from india or something for all you know, some people have invested insane amounts of money there to capitalise on cheap labour... and created infastructure to be able to export globally.

Supermarkets have been known to sell old fruit and also keep it in nitrogen rooms. Nitrogen is an inert gas and heavier than what air is at ground level, so it displaces air, its used commonly in the food industry, to keep air (namely the o2 component) off of food and beverage like wine, pump enough into a storage room and the oxygen and rest floats up and away from the fruit and veg... which is what they do to keep it from visibly spoiling, but it still gets old. Get it home and its going to spoil faster than something thats fresher.

Potatoes can be kept cold and they last longer, but too cold they spoil , ie if they freeze so have to avoid that... they can be kept in the fridge so long as its not turned down too cold, at about 5C. If you keep potatoes in a home and not in the fridge at around 5C and you are heating that home, they will spoil faster.

thankfully I live in the middle of the English countryside, on the edge of a small market town, far away from any "urban centres" and several hundreds of miles from any big city.
it is still possible to buy food from places other than a supermarket here, I don't think that is possible in the big cities from what I have been told.

Who knew apple and potato keeping could be so complex?

I don't know what sort any of the fruit or vegetables were, Hex, I was only a kid. They were just potatoes and apples to me, but I do know he kept them in wooden trays in the shed, which was also wooden - big and airy too - and the family had those all throughout winter - well, until the stock was gone.

And novum - I hate supermarkets more and more. They tricks they pull for their pennies. I think I might start buying potatoes from the local butcher who, oddly enough, gets his potato stock direct from a local farmer.

Its not all that difficult. Just keep potatoes and the like as they were when digging them up... Store in cool, dry place which is safe from sunlight and you should be good to go.. With apples is much more about the variety, the winter types last for ages.

Our family home had apple trees. What we did to keep the apples for months on end was to wrap them each in a sheet of newspaper then place in a cardboard box and put them in a dark cool cupboard. You could keep them for ages doing this.

Forgot how good Greek tomatoes are!

They are red, like blood red, juicy like a peach and don't have 5mm thick skins.