cutting potatoes in half

[Eden]

My friend has asked me to ask you all about this - he is from Finland and he has been told that by his father in law that if you cut a sprouted potato in half (it seems, cut side down planted first). Then you get 2 potatoes to plant. He did this and planted them 2 weeks ago and was wondering if I'd heard of this method as none of his spuds have come up yet. Personally I've never heard of it I can see the whole thing not working. Anyone else heard of this or even done it with or without success??
Many thanks
Eden

[Two_Sheds]

yep, this should work, so long as each half has 'eyes'

[Eden]

thanks for the reply, is there any reason why the crop would be smaller or fail if you half the potatoes. Once the tuber puts out roots and foliage it would be just the same as a whole tuber, yeah?

[dexterdoglancashire]

Apparently this is what they did during WWII "Dig for victory" - sometimes people even peeled the "eyes" off the potatoes and planted those and got a crop. Bernie

[Two_Sheds]

I get good crops just off potato peelings...

[rustylady]

It's a bit late to be planting potatoes, unless you want them for Christmas, and they usually take a lot longer than 2 weeks to show above the ground. However, I've had potatoes grow from peelings and stray spuds left in the ground so there's no reason why you shouldn't get a crop from half a seed potato. The only problem I can foresee is if the cut gets infected and the potato rots.

[vicpivo]

I cut my sprouting spuds into numerous pieces as long as they had eyes in them. I know have a plot of spuds ready to harvest.

It worked for me.....

[Biscombe]

Yep, it works, we had a teriffic crop from doing this! A Spanish friend told me to do this, potatoes were grownlike this in the Spanish Civil War when food was tight!

[yoanbob]

yup, my dad uses to plant peelings.

[Flummery]

I never do it just because I like to plant small seed spuds. My Dad and Father in law did it. Wartime. We young-uns (Har har!) don't really need to. You do risk introducing rot or disease into the cut surface - some people recommend leaving it a day or so to dry off a bit and scab over. However, most people get away with it. If I bought a bag of seed spuds that were very large, so I felt I wasn't getting many plants for my money, I'd probably have a go.

[DirtDobber]

It is standard practice here in the US if the tuber is large....but it is also recommended that you wait a day or two to plant the pieces so that they have time to scab over...or to put if they are large......