h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Winter veg isn't my strongest subject, but I do know this from experience about keeping your autumn crops into winter:

Don't be tempted to dig up any more than you need at one point: the veg will almost always keep better in the ground than anywhere you can store them. Potatoes and leeks are a case in point. late summer and autumn crops will cope in the ground till Christmas at least. I've manged to put together leek, potato and onion soup (with a few spring onions also kept growing) as late as early January.

If it's crops that you do have to dig up, hang them. This really does keep them going longer. Shallots and onions plaited into an old fashioned style rope look great and will keep for months - just twist one out of its papery coating from ther bottom of the rope. Even tomatoes, left on the vine and hung in a cool porch will keep for many weeks without going to that nasty green mush that you get when you put supermarket tomatoes in the fridge.

Tomatoes of all types (supermarket or otherwise) keep better at room temperature or lower *outside* the fridge...the fridge will actually cause your tom's to go icky...something to do with the drying way in which a fridge keeps things cool.

Plus they taste much better at room temp...I keep mine in a fruit bowl next to a little dish of salt.