Editing Irish Famine (1740–1741) (section)

==Potatoes deteriorate==
The Great Frost affected the potato, which was one of the two main staples (the other was oatmeal) in rural Ireland. Potatoes typically were left in storage in gardens and in special storage in fields. The crops from the autumn of 1739 were frozen, destroyed and inedible. They could not serve as seeds for the next growing season. "Richard Purcell, one of the best rural witnesses of the unfolding crisis, reported in late February [1740] that had the Frost not occurred, there would have been enough potatoes in his district to have kept the country [Ireland] fed until August [1740], indicating a rare local abundance of the crop. 'But both root and branch…is destroyed every where', except for 'a few which happen'd to be housed', and 'in a very few deep…and turfy moulded gardens where some, perhaps enough for seed for the same ground, are sound.'"<ref>Dickson (1997), p. 21</ref>

At that time, potatoes were typically stored in the fields where they were grown, in earthen banks known as potato clamps.<ref name="clamp">[http://secrets-of-self-sufficiency.com/how-to-store-vegetables Illustrative Potato Clamp Design]</ref> They were put among layers of soil and straw that normally prevented frost from penetrating deeply enough to destroy the contents of the clamp. This disruption of the agricultural cycle created problems in Ireland in the winter of 1740–1741.