Starting Potatoes

[Jess]

Some of my potatoes from the organic delivery guy are starting to sprout. They are stored downstairs in the basement. Can I use them to grow more potatoes? If so how? All references I'm finding this morning seem to be about bought seed potatoes.

[Janet Jinkner]

It sounds to me like you 'bought' them... from the organic delivery guy! Oh. you mean "certified" seed potatoes. Mostly the certified part just means clean of disease. If you like these potatoes and they are sprouting well, then grow them. After all, what will it hurt to experiment? If they don't grow well or for some other reason you don't like them, what have you lost? Not much. What have you gained? If nothing else, then you've gained experience. THAT has value.

Don't be afraid to experiment with growing food from stuff that you bought as food.. Especially if you bought it as organic. Our latest experiment has been with organic raw spanish peanuts. We put a few in a styrofoam tray with a paper towel under and over them. We water them every time we noticed they had dried out a little bit, and we kept them on a shelf over the wood stove, so they had some nice bottom heat. Almost all of them sprouted. The biggest ones are a couple inches high now, and I just repotted 36 of the and put them out in the green house.

if we had tried this and they had not grown, we would still have gained experience. By being willing to accept failure, we feel that we've really gotten something valuable this time. My experiment now is putting coffee seeds and tea tree seeds up on that shelf. I think the cffee is starting to sprout. (This has to be real coffee seed. You can't use coffee beans that have already been roasted and are ready to grind.)

[amygwh]

I usually manage to use actual certified seed potatoes each spring, but I have a friend who, at potato starting time, uses any organic potatoes in her kitchen that have started to sprout, as long as they seem healthy. She usually cuts one or two apart to check the insides, and if they look good (no weird spots or discoloration) she plants them. The last couple of years she has grown a lot of fingerling potatoes, because they are what she had on hand in March.

The big risk is that of introducing a disease into your garden, since store-potatoes aren't certified disease-free, but if your area is like mine, most plant problems blow in on the wind, anyway. My friend's garden has stayed potato-disease free even after several years of using grocery-store organic potatoes as her seed potatoes, but if you are concerned about introducing a disease into your garden, you could try growing your sprouting organic potatoes in a very large container.

Essentially, I'm with Janet on the garden experimenting. How will we know if we don't try and then tell others our results? I hope her Great Peanut Experiment succeeds, and that your potatoes produce abundantly.

[Jess]

Great! Thanks, I'll give it a go ;)

[Joanna Bailey]

You should be able to use them just fine.
The only caveat is that if the potatoes come from an area with blight, they could transmit it to your soil. Also, I have read that re-using seed stock for a few years can leave you with less hardy/productive plants.

I think if you're looking to experiment, and not use them to grow your main crop, you should be fine.

[Rachel]

Last year I cut up sprouted potatoes and tossed them in soil and they did fine. The plants are large, though, so be prepared for 1 plant /sq ft or less.

[Jess]

I was going to try growing them in large buckets to save space in the garden ......

[MaryD]

We're experimenting with growing potatoes in 'towers'. Last year I grew some in used garbage bags and got 18 inches tall of potatoes - the bags deteriorated in the sun. This year we have bought some badly designed compost bins specifically for potato growing. The bins are too skinny and straight-sided for compost bins, but should be a good shape for potato growing. They were very cheap - probably because of their poor design. So far we have almost 3 feet of potatoes in one of them. It is heading for winter here, so it was a late experiment, and we won't know it the plants will last in the cold which is coming on.

Basically, you put the potatoes in the bottom on earth or newspaper, and cover them with straw, hay, earth or other non-green, non-wet composty stuff. Keep covering them every time you see the plant showing, till you get to the top. To harvest - just lift the bin off - no digging and the makings of compost.

[Jess]

Ooo, let us know how it goes. That's basically what I was planning to do, only in buckets.