Grow Your Own Magazine

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

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

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

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?

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

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Appreciate the little things in life because one day you will realise they are the big things

I get good crops just off potato peelings...

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

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.

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.....

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!

yup, my dad uses to plant peelings.

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Yo an' Bob
Walk lightly on the earth
take only what you need
give all you can
and your produce will be bountifull

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.

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 17th - The Big Dig

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......