Potatoes should be rotated in the garden, never being grown in the same spot until there has been a 3-4 year absence of potatoes.
Cutting your seed potatoes is a thrifty way of increasing your seed stock and potential yield. Each piece will grow a potato plant that will produce numerous tubers. Select egg sized segments with at least three sprouts per piece and cut the potatoes with a sharp knife.
As long as your seed potatoes have 'eyes', which are shoots on various parts of the potatoes, they can be cut in half and planted. If the soil has been well cultivated and is not too wet, you can plant potatoes immediately.
Curing Cut Seeds Before Planting
To cure them you simply need to let the cut potatoes sit in an airy, dry place that is out of the sun for 2 or 3 days.
You do not need to plant a whole, intact potato. Seed potatoes can be cut into pieces before planting. Each piece should have at least one "eye" each—a bud that will sprout into a new plant. Use a sharp, clean knife to cut the seed potatoes into 2-inch squares.
Each eye has the potential to grow into a whole new plant. Because of this, seed potatoes are typically not planted whole. Instead, they are cut up into pieces prior to planting to yield more plants from each seed potato. Cut seed potatoes into pieces that are about the size of a golf ball.
As a general rule, if the plant is healthy, you can expect to dig up about five or six full-size potatoes. Every potato plant will most likely have a bunch of smaller, baby-size potatoes as well.
Peeled and refrigerated potatoes that aren't soaked will still be safe to eat the next day, but the chemical reaction caused by exposure to oxygen will turn your spuds a weird pinkish/brown color.
You can leave them in the ground until needed, and they will keep growing larger, but the longer they're in the soil, the more likely they are to get damaged by slugs. Dig up potatoes carefully, inserting your fork at least 30cm (1ft) away from the base of the plant to avoid spearing the tubers.
Potato Storing After Harvest
The tubers can last for six to eight months when stored in cool temperatures. When storing garden potatoes in temperatures above 40 F. (4 C.), they will only last three or four months. The spuds will also shrivel and may sprout.
When planting, an NPK ratio of 15-15-15 is ideal. A month or two after they've been planted, potatoes need lots of nitrogen, so a fertilizer with an NPK of 34-0-0 is the best choice. An NPK of 12-12-17 or 14-7-21 is best for the last couple of months before harvest when the plants require more potassium.
Yes! You can plant a sprouted potato and grow more potatoes. You will actually get several potato plants and ultimately a bunch of new potatoes from just one sprouted potato if you do it right.
The long and short of it is that—yes! —sprouted potatoes are usually safe to eat. But you are going to want to trim those tiny growths before you cook the spuds.
The best (and most popular) way to keep cut potatoes from turning brown is to completely submerge them in a bowl of water. Store the water-covered potatoes in a bowl in the refrigerator until you're ready to use them, up to one day in advance.
Topping & Harvesting
The Peer plants are topped with the topper to remove greenery and flowers, just leaving the roots and potatoes still in the ground. This helps harvesting as it helps the potatoes come away from the root better.
There are a number of reasons why potato growers should try to manage weeds within their fields. Weeds can compete with potato plants for light, water and nutrients. Weeds may act as hosts for other pests, such as diseases, insects or nematodes and could serve as a reservoir for pests within a field.
If you don't harvest potatoes when the plant dies back, a couple things could happen. Most likely they will rot if the soil is wet, or they'll die once the ground freezes. But if you live in a warm and dry enough climate, any tubers that survive over the winter will sprout again in the spring.
It's generally fine to reuse potting soil if whatever you were growing in it was healthy. If you did notice pests or diseases on your plants, it's best to sterilize the mix to avoid infecting next year's plants.
Can you eat potatoes right after harvest? Sure can! While we recommend curing them for long-term storage, freshly-dug potatoes are perfect for eating right out of the ground (maybe clean them off a bit first).
If you'll be cooking the potatoes in the next few hours, you can leave them submerged in water at room temperature, Tiess says. If it will be longer than a few hours, place them in the refrigerator. Peeled, sliced, submerged, and refrigerated potatoes should be cooked within 24 hours.
Cubed peeled potatoes can sit in water overnight, but they need to be refrigerated. Cut the potatoes into equal size chunks so that when you decide to boil them they will cook at the same time, usually 1 1/2 to 2 inch chunks.
Why use salt water for soaking potatoes? There's moisture naturally found in potatoes, and moisture is drawn to higher concentrations of salt. (This is a process called osmosis.) So, if you put the potatoes in a salt water bath, that will help draw out some of their moisture, resulting in crispier fries.
Our 2kg packs contain between 20 to 25 tubers graded 35 to 60 mm. If you have ordered plug plants for dispatch in March or April, we will send your seed potatoes during the same week.
Assuming that all the potatoes in the bag are of medium size, we can calculate the number of potatoes in the bag by dividing the total weight of the bag by the weight of a single potato. So, using this estimation, we can calculate that there would be approximately 66-67 potatoes in a 10 kg bag.