Planting eating potatoes?

[barefootlinzi]

I got a few bags of potatoes from my local shop, he gave them to me for free as they had gone out of date and he was just going to throw them away. They are starting to go green and sprout so I don't have long to use them up, so I wondered about planting some of them. Would it work if I planted them in my allotment? Would they be more prone to disease?

[Clara]

In the UK seed potatoes are certified disease free (I think they have to come from a certain altitude), where are your spuds from?

I´ve planted eaters, because you just don´t get any unusual varieties here and the seed potatoes come in 25kg sacks. I´ve never had any problem, though if they are carrying blight you´ll render the earth where you plant them unusable for future potato crops for many years.

One way round this is to use the container method for growing potatoes, then at least if they are blight ridden you only have to dispose of the earth in the barrel or whatever. So long as you are able to keep on top of the watering, this is a much better way of growing spuds IMO, far less labour intensive.

If you decide to go ahead and plant them, remember to choose one strong (not stringy) looking shoot (chit) and remove the rest. You want three or four in an average size bin.

[Annpan]

My neighbour's Dad grew from eating potatoes all his life and never had a problem. You can also grow from your own saved seed potatoes (I am doing some of that this year) you just need to be careful with blight as Clara says, but go for it.

Also.... I have read several suggestions about how many shoots to leave on a chitted potato, ranging from 1 to all, I don't think it makes much difference.

[Clara]

Also.... I have read several suggestions about how many shoots to leave on a chitted potato, ranging from 1 to all, I don't think it makes much difference.

My OH left them all on the first year we grew spuds (he did them in traditional hills) the problem we encountered was that we had shoots come up everywhere that made keeping the lines nice and neat difficult, but didn't affect the crop.

[MuddyWitch]

I'd call 'em self-chitted & plant 'em...in fact I have been known to do just that on several occassions

The advice on container growing might be good though, try to nab a few of those big, white builders' bags. You can get four spuds in them. Only half fill them to start with. They can be topped up as the spuds grow to 'earth up'

Good Luck

MW

[Thomzo]

Yup - plant em on up. I've done it for years and have some from my organic box chitting now. Planning on planting them in the big old metal barrel my neighbour gave me. He used to use it as an incinerator but it's huge and got lovely holes punched all around the base so I reckon it'll be perfect.

Zoe

[chadspad]

I always use eting potatoes that have sprouted and theyre always good. I use a huge tractor tyre to grow mine along with 2 cracked water butts. I use grass cuttings to heap up and the potatoes are fab!

[MrDirtyBoots]

I would definitely go for it. If they are sprouting then they should give you a good crop. For some reason I have never had much success planting un-chitted potatoes although they are supposed to grow just as well, just take a little longer.

As long as they are disease free you should be fine.

[barefootlinzi]

well they are sitting on my window sill chitting and then i will plant them!

[Shutsumon]

I planted a random eating potato that self chitted (it'd fallen out of the bag and rolled behind the fridge where I found it already sprouty) in a large pot in the bathroom window in mid-january. I figured if it was carrying blight it couldn't infect the soil in a pot - I'd just have to get rid of the compost and scrub out the pot. I covered it with just an inch of compost and earthed it up the pot as it grew until it reached the top.

Today I had to put it outside because it's grown too big for the bathroom window. I know tats aren't frost hardy so I'll have to pull it into the hall if there's a risk of frost but hopefully it'll be okay. If it lives it should produce me a crop (albeit a small one) by sometime in May I think .

[mrsflibble]

i planted wo crops of eaters last year, one crop was fine but small, the other ended up with blight but thankfully i had used the growbag method.

i will be doing the same 'cos i had some tasty organic red-skins which have started chitting in my cupboard.

i have grown a lot of potatoes in my time and only ever used eaters. last year was the first time i had blight, which is a wierd disease 'cos the plants appear fairly normal til you go to dig them up and all you find is snot.

[Rosendula]

When I was sorting through my sacks of allotment-grown spuds last year I put all the little tiny ones in a bowl and let Katie play with them for a while. Not a good idea, as we kept finding them all over the house. A couple of weeks ago, she had an accident while she was napping on the settee with no nappy on. While OH was cleaning it up, he decided to hunt for treasure down the back - 2 Nintendo DS stylus things, crumbs, bobbles - and half a dozen chitted potatoes! The shoots on them were about 2 feet long! As you can tell, I clean down the back of the couch just a bit less often than I clean the kitchen floor

[gigglybug]

I'm growing my potatoes in my green waste recycling bags this year, just like the ones you can buy especially for potatoes buy only £1 each!

[snapdragon]

Being tightfisted I cut the growth with a good slice off the spud and eat the rest - then the 'chips' sit in an egg box on the windowledge for a bit and when they look like they have a good strong sprout they get planted in pots, old dog food bags or coal bags. no heavy crops, but a kilo or so of spuds for nothing is worthwhile IMHO