Sprouting 200 seed potatoes.

[gary350]

Today I have 109 seed potatoes to sprout before planting them in the garden. I only want to transplant the seed potatoes that grow. There might be 10 to 20 seed potatoes that eyes don't grow. This will probably take 1 month. I hope it takes 6 weeks I don't want to plant more seed potatoes in the garden until about Sept 1st. Fill pot 6" from top with potting soil then some water. Place all the seed potatoes on potting soil surface with eyes up. Mix about 2 gallons of potting soil with about 1/2 gallon of garden soil then cover seed potatoes with 1" of soil mix. Leave the pot under a shade tree for 2 weeks then check to see if any potatoes are starting to grow eyes. Keep watching when potato eyes start to grow small plants & roots transplant to the garden. Red Norland potatoes are a 3 month crop. Our first frost is Nov 1st.

Next I do another pot with about 100 Kennebec seed potatoes. Small potatoes are perfect for soup and stew but better for seed potatoes. 100 plants will grow a lot of new potatoes.

I dug these potatoes up in my garden 2 weeks ago, time to grow more new potatoes.

 

[Meadowlark]

I'm doing something similar. My main crop potatoes were dug at the end of May this year. From these I selected seed potatoes which I purposely let rest in dark storage about 6 weeks before starting to encourage them to grow eyes. Potatoes need a period of dormancy according to large commercial growers I have spoken with.

The two varieties I selected from my spring experiment are Sarpo Mira a red skin/golden flesh spud and Elba by far the best white potato I've ever grown, and which significantly outperformed all other white potatoes.

I have many pounds of new potatoes mostly red pontiac in storage from the spring harvest and I'm hoping to extend our potato supply by growing these late summer varieties. They will be planted about Aug. 1 with some in containers and some in ground.

As back-up, we have a great crop of three varieties of sweet potato in progress, about 35-40 Jicama plants, and a tub of Sunchokes all pointing towards harvest at about first frost. I don't intend to run out of garden potatoes or potato substitutes this winter.