Gretchen and I were talking with Verne, her father, and mentioned that the remaining potatoes we have in cold storage were sprouting, since the cold room was warming up with the weather, and we were worried about loosing all of the potatoes we had left. He recalled that one of his most hated chores as a boy was to pick the sprouting potatoes out of the storage bin and break the sprouts off so they would keep longer.
The temperature in our cold room is up to about 55°F and the ideal temperature for storing potatoes is around 40°F with high humidity — around 85%. Well, it turns out that those are just about the same conditions that exist in the vegetable crisper of your refrigerator. So now ours is filled with de-sprouted potatoes… and it seems to work. The potatoes are noticeably firmer.