I've buried a sprouting potato from the supermarket in the ground, just to see what would happen and have actually gotten some small potatoes. I wasn't really trying hard to grow anything, so someone who actually took care of the plants would probably have a better result than I did.
Have you ever grown a potato from a potato?
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My mom used to grow potatoes from store bought spuds. This was well over 60 yrs ago, before so many chemicals to prolong the shelf life of fresh potaoes were used. She would put them in tires with straw and some soil, and as the plant grew, she would add additional tires, dirt and straw. When it was time to gather the crop, you would just remove the tires, scatter the dirt and straw and there were your potatoes. If we wanted the little new baby potatoes, we would just take apart a tire tower before they had a chance to get large.
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I have never seen a potato which wouldn't sprout; perhaps someone could tell me how this "spraying to stop sprouting" works, as I'm not sure I believe it.
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The way it has been explained to me is that when the big potato buyers bring the potatos into their sorting facility they are first run through a cleaning vat on big conveyors. After they are cleaned they go into a vat with some kind of chemical that acts as a growth inhibitor thus supposedly stopping the sprouting process. Not all of the commercial potatos have this done to them. You never know until they sprout or in the case that they have been treated with the chemicals they just end up rotting.
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How about we try an experiment then?
We all put a potato into a warm dark place, leave it a couple of months and see if it sprouts?
My bet is on 100% sprouting, as I believe that this is a lie put about to discourage the use of shop-bought potatoes as seed.
There is one very good reason for this; potato diseases spread very easily, diseases which do no harm to people, but which devastate potato crops, and proper seed potatoes are certified disease-free.
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I like to experiment with this kind of stuff and I did try it, though it seems that the potato growth was very very slow due to the chemicals that they use on their potatoes. The ending product though seemed like it was just too weak and I didn't want to try it, So in conclusion, you can grow a potato from a potato.
They do it to Garlic too, it prolongs the shelf life. That's why you only get small bulbs from replanted supermarket garlic.
Seed potatoes an old gardeners trick !
Do you want to halve your cost of seed potatoes and double the yield at the same time ?
How about if I told you that you cut the cost of seed by 75% and quadruple the yield ! ?
It's really easy, it works, my father and grandfather used to do it, all you do is look at the sprouts on a seed potato, if there are lots of them, then cut the potato into four between the sprouts, if there are only a few just cut it in half, put some hormone rooting powder on the exposed cuts, and plant as normal.
As soon as the plants start to flower, water, and water well, this will produce larger spuds
Try it you will be amazed !
Do you want to halve your cost of seed potatoes and double the yield at the same time ?
How about if I told you that you cut the cost of seed by 75% and quadruple the yield ! ?
It's really easy, it works, my father and grandfather used to do it, all you do is look at the sprouts on a seed potato, if there are lots of them, then cut the potato into four between the sprouts, if there are only a few just cut it in half, put some hormone rooting powder on the exposed cuts, and plant as normal.
As soon as the plants start to flower, water, and water well, this will produce larger spuds
Try it you will be amazed !
After we all stocked up on it last year, they changed their minds
Still, probably never have to buy it again
I recently saw a list of things to grow or buy organic, and potatoes were near the top of the list. Regular potatoes from the store scored highest for the amount of pesticides. I don't think I'd want to start my crop from them.
You have to appreciate that wherever you buy potatoes from they will have gone through a commercial process, and from what I've seen of that process it is very environmentally unfriendly, from the amount of water use to wash them, to the peat that is used to help clean them and then give them that "just dug" look, that is before you take into the amount of water drawn from rivers for irrigation, the use of an acid to burn off the greenery so that it doesn't clog the harvesters, to the chemical fertilisers and herbicides used.
All commercial potato growing used this process and it's very difficult to avoid it, crisps or potato chips go through the process too, as does all the frozen potato products, when you think about it we eat a lot of food that goes through a commercial cleansing process.
Which explains why I grow my own potatoes. Sometimes I will buy from a local farmer at the farmers market if mine aren't ready yet or I've used mine up, but mostly I eat only ones I grow.
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I put a potato that was sprouting in a 20 gallon toe and grew a tote of potatoes. I'm in Minnesota, so was unaware of the Blite disease.
I grew potatoes for the first time this year. I bought six seed potatoes of Yukon Gold. I used the method of growing them in a container and adding soil as the plants grew to save garden space rather than hilling them. From those very small seed potatoes that were planted whole, I got about 15 pounds of beautiful yellow gold potatoes. Next year I will be planting more since my experiement turned out so well. After reading the helpful information posted here I may learn to make my own chips.