Gardeners' World icon Alan Titchmarsh has told his green-fingered fans how they should store potatoes so they don't sprout.

This had been an age old problem for keen gardeners - how to store your vegetables without them sprouting. And gardening icon Alan Titchmarsh, 75, has a solution.

He told the Gardeners' World podcast: "Remember when you are storing onions and potatoes, they need two different things. When you're digging your spuds up to store them for the winter, make sure you put them in really thick paper sacks so they're in the dark.

"The main crop of potatoes tend to last longer stored than the earlier crops do but do store them in the dark.

"If they get any light they start to sprout and they won't last quite as long."

Alan was Gardeners' World's main presenter from 1996 to 2002 and has hosted a range of other gardening programmes.

The TV presenter went on to offer some sage advice when it came to storing onions - and it was the complete opposite he put forward for storing potatoes.

Alan said: "Onions, quite the reverse. Store your onions when you're digging them up in summer - I generally try and bend over the tops of the onions first to allow the sun to ripen the bulbs.

"They hang up in my shed right through the winter and they like light so they're near the window. That will make sure they don't sprout too much and they will last me right the way through to next spring."

It came after Alan revealed there is a 'magic free ingredient' that helps plants grow quicker. As part of a series of tips on how to water your garden – and when not to water – Alan has said that rainwater has a “magic ingredient” that simply isn’t present in the water we get from the mains.

As a result, he says one of the most vital piece of equipment any gardener could buy is a water butt. On the Gardener’s World podcast, he explained: “The funny thing is, there’s something about rain.

“It’s got some sort of magic ingredient and plants always seem to grow more rapidly from rainwater, from water that comes out of the hosepipe.

“So make sure that there ware water butts on all your downpipes, so that you’re saving rainwater.”