seed potatoes

[mrbiffo]

And now my first question of the year to all of the lovely people on here is
I have bought some seed potatoes and i have never grown them before , now I'm not sure if i have bought them to early but i would like to know the best way to store them before chitting so they don't sprout to soon.Any advice would be most welcome.
The three varieties i have chosen are sarpo mira golden wonder and international kidney. Many Many Thanks in advance
kind regards
mr biffo

[Penellype]

You can't stop potatoes sprouting, so best to put them in a tray to chit and let them get on with it. Put them somewhere light and not too warm (but frost free). The worst thing you can do is keep them warm and dark, as this will lead to them forming long, white and fragile shoots which are easily broken.

[Potstubsdustbins]

^^^^^^^As above my seed spuds have been in their egg trays chitting for a week or more. Yours will take a week to get started and then providing the conditions are right i.e. plenty of light they will grow nice short stems of the correct colour.

[jonny the plant pot]

International kydney is a great choice i was torn between them and lady christl and went for the latter. As abover really get them chitting now ready for planting on april fools day.

[Jungle Jane]

I bought some the other day,lady C,arran pilot & charlottes,they're on the windowsill in a paper lined tray & egg boxes. If they were in a shed window,the cold might delay the growth of the roots,I've never put them in a shed but they'll be fine on the windowsill for months

[Snadger]

Mine are chiiting away nicely in the summerhouse window with a sheet of that polystyrene stuff they use under laminate floors covering them to give light and insulation.

[mrbiffo]

Thank you very much for your advice
mrbiffo

[mrbiffo]

Thank you very much for your input
mrbiffo

[mrbiffo]

Thanks very much i will do as advised
mrbiffo

[Potstubsdustbins]

Keep an eye on them to ensure they are the right way up, even leaving the spruts facing down could make them grow white and spindly.

[TrialAndError]

With all due respect to the previous posters, my experience differs to theirs and I will explain why.

First, your question was " the best way to store them before chitting so they don't sprout to soon" and that is a very sensible question.

Potatoes should be planted (sprouted or not) so that they appear above ground just after the last frost date occurs in your area of the UK. If they appear above ground before that date they will be affected by the frost.

At the very least, a frost will check their growth and in many cases it will seriously damage them.

On that basis you should start chitting them at a date when you believe they can then be planted and the foliage will appear above ground after the last frost date in your area. Any earlier and they will be damaged to some degree, any later (by a couple of weeks) and it won't really make much difference.

The potato growing companies encourage you to buy their seed potatoes as early as possible because this maximises their profits. But their endeavours to do this should not affect the date you start chitting your potatoes.

The best sprouts from a seed potato are just a tad less than an inch long. They should be deep green in colour. This can only be achieved if light levels are are sufficient. Light levels are not sufficient to achieve this in the UK in January and early February.

When to start chitting your potatoes depends 100% on where in the UK you live. Sunny Bournemouth will have higher light levels and a far earlier last frost date compared to chilly Harrogate. Chiiting and planting dates between those two extremes is about 7 weeks.

Never ever take note of someone who says they start chitting their potatoes xyz date unless your climate is the same as theirs. If they live in Bournemouth and you live in Harrogate, things will go terribly wrong if you take their advice.

To get back to your original question, which is very valid, store seed potatoes in cool conditions, as near to a few degrees above freezing as you can manage and never below freezing. Store them in the dark and with plenty of ventilation.

One remaining remark - do the commercial growers of potatoes chit their potatoes? No, never and they are the experts.

Apologies to all those I contradict, this it just my personal opinion.

[Penellype]

As always, there is more than one way of doing things, and no one-size-fits-all "right" answer. Many of the things that we do have their origin in tradition and superstition as well as other people's past experience and various restrictions on what is actually possible.

Rather than starting with "what is the right way to do this?" I tend to tackle growing things with "what am I trying to achieve and what is the best way to go about it?". I then take into account everything I know about that particular crop, and I research to find out whether anyone else has done what I am trying to do. Google can be very useful!

Take first early potatoes. What am I trying to achieve? My goal is to be self-sufficient in potatoes, and that is not easy because there is a long gap between when last year's potatoes start to sprout and become inedible and the first new potatoes of spring. I store some of my maincrop as mash in the freezer, but this doesn't last for ever. My first earlies are therefore an important part of my diet and deserve 5 star treatment. The aim is to have some of edible size at the beginning of May.

Question 1 - is this possible? With the right variety and careful management with respect to the weather, yes it should be. For the last 2 years I have harvested golf ball sized new potatoes on 7th May (Rocket in 2015, Lady Christl in 2016).

Question 2 - how best to achieve this. Given that I don't have room for buckets of potatoes in the house under the grow lights, and I don't have a heated greenhouse, I make use of the sunniest part of my friend's greenhouse for the very earliest potatoes. I plant them in buckets and protect them with bubble wrap. I cover the buckets with cloches to provide an extra layer of insulation at first. I buy them as soon as possible after new year and put them to chit on the windowsill. I plant the first ones, the ones with the biggest chits, in the first week of February. Grown this way the first shoots emerge from the compost around the middle of March. This would be disastrous outside unless you could provide good frost protection.

If I simply bunged the potatoes into the buckets in February without chitting them, this would be equivalent to storing them in a cold, dark place, and would effectively slow them down. By allowing them to start growing in the house I am speeding up the process. They do take some time to emerge after planting, presumably because they have had a check to growth when moving out into the cold greenhouse, but I reckon what I do is the best that can be achieved without artificial heat and light in the north of England.

Potatoes will grow if you just bung them in the ground any old how. That's what they are for. They will grow if you leave them in the ground over winter (providing they are deep enough to avoid the worst frost) - that's how they reproduce in the "wild". What gardeners are trying to do is get the best possible crop from the plants. If you are growing earlies and want an early crop, chitting helps. If you are planting later, when the soil is warm, you don't need to chit. However, the seed potatoes will still need to be stored until planting time. I would rather store mine in open trays where I can keep an eye on them, rather than in a bag in a warm shop where some of them will be in the dark in the middle of the bag or pile. I also like to make sure that I can get the varieties I want, so I buy them as soon as they appear.

[DataMonkey]

So now I'm totally confused :-(

I've got a mixture of first and second earlies at the moment, just bought last weekend.

I can chit them in the spare bedroom (warm and light) or the garage (cool but dark).

The other factor is that my wife hates having them in the spare bedroom, but obviously that's less important than the well-being of the potatoes.

So where should I chit them ??

[jonny the plant pot]

In your bedroom and give your lovely wife the spare

[Potstubsdustbins]

Funny I have never noticed a lack of light to chit my seeds, they all ways seem to send out the correct colour spruts usually green or red.

Its only when I make a mistake that I get white spruts and these are easily rubbed of to start again if need be.