The day has finally arrived… the day that we purchased our seed potatoes! It’s a huge day in the allotment calendar and one of the staple crops that we grow, we eat potatoes a lot of the time so it’s a big deal for us and one of our most important crops. We were out for the day on Sunday looking around a garden centre and on the way back we decided to head to our favourite potato shop, Gilberts Nursery in Sherfield English. This just so happens to be our favourite spot because they sell the potatoes loose (and they have a lovely little tearoom too!) so instead of guessing how many seed potatoes you will get in a pre-packed bag we can select the best looking and correct amount of potatoes that we need.
This year I’ve decided to give myself a little experiment, I’ve selected a few seed potatoes with more than one eye on them so I can cut them in half and plant each piece out. As long as a piece of seed potato has an eye on it then you will supposedly get a potato plant from each piece and I’d love to see if the crop results are any different. This year I’m growing my favourite early salad variety, International Kidney (otherwise known as Jersey Royals) I grow this variety every year and so far they’ve been great, plus the taste is just amazing! There will be 4 rows measuring 3 metres in length with 9 in each row, so therefore I picked out 36 of the best seed potatoes I could find to take home ready to chit. My Dad grows the main potatoes and this year he’s chosen Cara and Maris Piper, his potato beds are a lot bigger than mine so he had to stock up on more seed potatoes but hopefully it will be worth it. Whilst I was there I also treated myself to some loose sugar snap pea seeds, they are just so delicious and I couldn’t resist! Now I just need to figure out where I’m going to grow them…
I always chit my potatoes by sitting them all in a plastic seed tray and leaving them ontop of the fridge. You don’t want to put the potatoes anywhere dark as they will produce long, white sprouts instead of the healthy dark purple, stumpy sprouts that we like best. I leave them to chit until Good Friday (so roughly about 8 weeks) when I traditionally plant them out into trenches. They’ll be ready to harvest in June and enjoyed with lashings of butter, I can’t wait!
If you would like to know more about how to chit, grow and harvest potatoes then head on over to the Youtube channel where you’ll find a handy video guide.
7 thoughts on “Potato day”
Hey Katie
My Mum who was well known for her green fingers used to cut her seed potatoes so they had one eye per piece and she used to get the most incredible harvests!!!!
Hello and thank you so much for this comment, it’s good to hear of people getting such good response from cutting the seed potatoes. Thanks again!
Hi Katie ! You’d think at my age there would be nothing left to learn. But, as you’ve shown me in the past, there is. I have always cut my potatoes in pieces, one eye per piece, but, had never thought about why the eyes get so long and white. Thanks so much for that and as always, keep up the good work. I suppose I live vicariously through you at times. You are so young and beginning your life. I wish you all the luck with everything. So much for you to look forward to. Thanks for all your hard work. You make the gardening world fun~~~
Hello Leatrice and thank you again for such a lovely comment, you have certainly made my day so thank you for all the kind words
Hi Katie
Around here they always cut their potatoes. The oldtimers(I am one of them now) say that too many eyes in one spot makes for a lot of small potatoes. I grow 400′ of mixed and I cut them also so I don’t have to use so many. Chitting first helps make sure each piece has a growing eye as not all the eyes grow. I use lots of old rotted cow manure and the are always healthy with no blight. It has been 5 years since I bought any seed so giving back to the soil makes it so it can give back to you.
Have a great day.
I’ve heard lots recently about the old timers cutting the potatoes up and I’m so excited to do it too. I was just looking at my potatoes chitting on the side here and seeing where I can cut them 🙂
Hi
There is another reason for cutting seed potatoes, the cost of some seed potato varieties, I like a purple fleshed kind called magic molly but the cost is unreal,$20.00+ a pound with 4 to 5 potatoes per pound the=is is $4.00 to 5.00 per single potato! You need to get every eye to grow at this price I got my seed two years ago and at this time of the year I am careful not to eat to many so I won’t need to buy any seed.
Here is a link to Johnnyseeds in Maine and the magic molly potato.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/potatoes/magic-molly-organic-potato-tubers-3896G.html?cgid=potatoes#start=1
Have a great day
Doug