Seed potatoes - long white shoots

[polc1410]

Yeh put them in.

My understanding on the basis I was told by someone who I believed so have never felt the need to look it up, was that white shoots the spud thinks its in the soil. Its dark and warm and so looking for nutrients. The shoots being like roots. The chits that traditional growers obsess over are what will become the plant.

I've grown from a sees no more than 1" in diameter with no chit. So you can expect a 1" sized potato to have the energy to get shoots out. But a very cold, very deep, already gone to the effort of growing really long shoots that still haven't found any nutrition may well struggle to get the green bits above soil.

Once the green is above soil the seed has done its job and is finished. So as long as the green appears and at similar time you might expect same yield...

Farmers don't chit potatoes. People here have tried head to head and found little difference.

I wouldn't take the shots off. (Didn't today when I planted some Albert Bartlet Rooster that had grown shoots in the cupboard). If they come off so be it. I don't believe they do any harm. But I've always planted white shoots down green shoots up...

[Kristen]

People here have tried head to head and found little difference.

Early varieties will crop earlier if chitted, but other than that makes no difference - except that if stored in the dark, instead of chitting, there is a risk that the seed potatoes will form long white shoots which will use up energy in the seed potato and probably break off when planting thus requiring the seed potato to make new ones with some delay and more energy used up.

But I've always planted white shoots down green shoots up...

Whether white or green they are shoots rather than roots, thus plant "upwards" - although the plant will sort itself out, so planting upwards is just to help reduce the time for the shoots to get above ground and start producing energy for the plant. If planted upside down the shoots will grow a U-bend and then grow upwards towards the light, it just takes a bit longer and a bit more stored energy is used up.

[snakeshack]

I d plant carefully trying to keep the shoots intact,after all there wont be any light when you've covered them over. Anyway you have nothing to lose

[Martin H]

I too would leave the shoots on and try and plant them really carefully without breaking them off. To do this I would lay the shoots horizontally in the trench.

Because they contain that reserve of food, potatoes seem pretty tolerant of all kinds of different treatments. If you look on the internet you will find videos of various weird and wonderful approaches, all claimed by their creators to be the best way of doing things.

I saw one last year where the gardener swung the seed potatoes from the long chits to thrown them onto unprepared ground and then covered them with armfuls of cut down herbaceous plant tops. I couldn't find that one again just now, but this one caught my eye as being equally odd (the meat of the action starts about 2 minutes in):

[rosiepumpkin]

in the end the shoots came off as it was such a tangled mess with the webbings of 2 bags plus shoots. one lot has gone in the fridge and the rest planted today. it'm not so conerned with crop, more that they make my plot look cultivated and take little time -as I have a huge overgrown plot to deal with.

[polc1410]

Yeh you can grow from little more than an over generous potato peeling provided it has an eye on it. But more prone to disease and more likely to need shallower soil as less energy reserve..

[Snow]

People often point out that farmers don't chit their potatoes, and point to this as evidence that it makes no difference: farmers know best, right?

The major flaw in that thinking, to my mind, is that farmers are growing thousands of the things, and chitting just wouldn't be practical and would be hard (perhaps impossible) to automate/mechanize, even if it was better. Unless the difference was significant enough to more than cover the additional cost and time then they obviously won't do it. But it may well be worth it to small growers like us.

So whereas we can see that not chitting your potatoes will certainly still result in potatoes, we don't know from this piece of evidence whether chitting is better, or not better.

I have never tested chitted verses non-chitting in the same year, under the same conditions, so I don't know if it makes any difference or not. For me, you'd have to measure not only date of emergence from the earth but subsequent yield, etc. But I imagine that if it does make better plants then it is probably only a little better.

If I had potatoes with long shoots like that in the original post, then I would take the opportunity to experiment by planting some as they are, rubbing some off, and rubbing all off on others, and see what happens. Fragility aside, I suspect they will grow fine.

Interesting to read what @Kristen said about those planted upside down creating a U bend. When I looked into where the tubers actually grow, it is on the stems off the main stolon - I wonder if planting upside down might actually result in a longer stolon and therefore more stems and more tubers. That's something for me to test out next year...