Warpy spuds?

[Birdie Wife]

I was asked this by my neighbour this morning - she is trying to get a plot going in her garden and she's finding lots of stones and bits of glass. She wants to plant spuds but she's worried in case the tubers would end up with bits of glass in them... I told her that the tubers might end up a little disfigured but they wouldn't have any bits actually inside - am I right, and does anyone out there have experience either way?

Personally I pick stones/whatever out of the plots if I come across them, but I don't turn the whole lot over looking for stones - I don't stress too much about them because I don't grow that many root veggies (technically tatties don't count as roots, right?).

[Earthbabe]

In my (very limited) experience I would say you are right BW. I pick big stones out but not the little ones. The little plot at home has all sorts in it and this was where we grew our first spuds. No bits inside and no strange shapes.

I think it would have to be really bad to affect the shape too much. Although there may be someone else with different experience.

Aren't potatoes tubers rather than roots?

[Nicos]

I always remove glass and pottery- would be easy to cut yourself when weeding.
Only remove large stones as they are irritating when you dig down and hit one with the spade ( and not so good for carrots etc)

[Earthbabe]

They are even more irritating when they get stuck between the tines of the fork!!

[rustylady]

It's unlikely that any bits of glass, stone etc would end up inside any crops either spuds or carrots (or any other root crop come to that). Remember the root starts off small and grows, so would either push aside the problem glass or stone or (more commonly with carrots esp) do a U-turn round the obstacle and carry on growing. Hence the wierd shaped root crops we get