bought seed potatoes now what ?

[wotters]

hi all , i recently bought 3 bags of seed potatoes from b and m , whats the best thing to do with them now as theres still quite a long way untill last frost / planting them out , last year i bought the same and just left them in the packaging, but they grew long white shoots before it was time to plant , i still planted them out and had great success, but this year id like to do it properly/better ?
thanks for any help

[Snoop Puss]

The first thing to do is to get them out of the packaging. I left mine my first year and had a terrible job trying to disentangle them all.

There are some great growing guides on the forum. Here's the one for potatoes.
https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gu...owing-potatoes
You might find the whole guide useful, but for now the section you want is "How to chit potatoes". Chitting is the process of getting those shoots started.

Lots of people chit their first and second earlies, but a lot of people don't bother with chitting their maincrop. It'll be interesting to see what members say.

By the way, if some of your chits snap off, it's not the end of the world, as I discovered, as your potato will grow more.

For other growing guides, look for the Growing Guides tab, towards the left at the top. There are guides for fruit and for veg. Happy browsing.

Good luck with your potatoes.

[Andraste]

Hi wotters,

I'm in the 'might as well chit them as they're kicking around the house doing nothing anyway' camp. Whether it really does any good I'm not sure but it doesn't seem to do any harm. There does seem to be a general consensus that it's not worth chitting maincrops as they're growing for longer so don't need the 'head start'.

After taking them out of the original packaging, seed spuds need somewhere dry, cool and dark until you're ready to chit (paper bag is ideal).

If they're already starting to sprout, knock off the white roots as they'll be weak and not what you want - you're aiming for purple/green shoots.

As a rough guideline, you start 'chitting' about 6 weeks before you expect to plant them in the ground - or any time now really if you don't have the dry, cool, dark space to keep them in.

[wotters]

thanks for the replies , ive just read through the chitting guide and think its probably about time to start chitting them soon , my only question is , the guide says to put them in a cool room to start chitting but does that mean away from any sunlight or would a window sill in a cool room be good ? , thanks

[Snoop Puss]

I chit in indirect light in a room with a reasonably steady temperature on the cool side.

[Andraste]

Mine go on the kitchen windowsill which is probably a bit too bright & warm on good weather days if I'm honest as it's basically south facing but it does the job ok.

In an ideal world I'd put them in a bit from the window in the spare bedroom which is north facing and the window's generally open just a crack so it's a tad cooler than elsewhere in the house, but I always forget to check things when I put them there & they generally don't make it back out alive lol

[Bren In Pots]

My potatoes are in egg trays about a foot away from a south facing bedroom window. I’ve always used that same spot and they do fine.

[ameno]

thanks for the replies , ive just read through the chitting guide and think its probably about time to start chitting them soon , my only question is , the guide says to put them in a cool room to start chitting but does that mean away from any sunlight or would a window sill in a cool room be good ? , thanks

They want good light when chitting, in order to prevent the sprouts from growing too long trying to search for light. A seed potato with long sprouts will still grow just fine, mind you, it's just that the long sprouts are fragile, and it's easy to knock them off when transporting and planting them.
I feel like mid-teens celcius is probably around the ideal temperature, but anywhere not too warm (and also frost-free) would be fine.

[Jungle Jane]

Mine go on trays on the least sunny windowsills (label them so you know what’s what Wotters )east facing,other windowsills are a bit too sunny,I don’t want them to warm up.

[wotters]

thanks everyone, potatoes are now chitting nicely and all have purply coloured sprouts , cant wait for it to warm up a bit now

[Andraste]

Me too wotters! We actually had a dry day yesterday - first for ages where we haven't had at least a bit of rain - we had snow last week (gggrrrr bbbbrrrr).

Do try to be patient though. We had an almost total failure last year because I insisted it was going past the 'right time' to get the spuds in & OH wasn't brave enough to dig his heals in that it was still too cold and the ground was too wet. Better to have lovely spuds a few weeks late than hardly any. x

[smallblueplanet]

Me too wotters! We actually had a dry day yesterday - first for ages where we haven't had at least a bit of rain - we had snow last week (gggrrrr bbbbrrrr).

Do try to be patient though. We had an almost total failure last year because I insisted it was going past the 'right time' to get the spuds in & OH wasn't brave enough to dig his heals in that it was still too cold and the ground was too wet. Better to have lovely spuds a few weeks late than hardly any. x

True. As we had our garden done over last year and we didn't plant our extremely long shooted spuds until 27th May! We had a decent crop from the 2nd early Nicola.

[nick the grief]

...Do try to be patient though. We had an almost total failure last year because I insisted it was going past the 'right time' to get the spuds in & OH wasn't brave enough to dig his heals in that it was still too cold and the ground was too wet. Better to have lovely spuds a few weeks late than hardly any. x

My old bosses dad was a head gardener and started as the Garden bout in about 1902 so he was from the era of victorian kitchen gardener and he was told if you can sit on the veg bed with you bare ar ...err bottom and drink a hot mug of tea then its too cold to plant I pointed out we have soil thermometers these days but he didn't deem impressed He never planted his spuds till the 2nd week of April - Our last frost date is early may round here so they were OK by then if they were above the ground.

Mine are still chitting under my grow lamp in the man cave so no rush - don't fall for all these people on you tube telling you to plant now ... I've not sown any toms or the likes yet - still loads of time

[Penellype]

Far too early to plant potatoes yet, especially in the wet ground that we have this year. I have 2 buckets of Lady C planted in the greenhouse and covered in bubble wrap for early new potatoes, but they wont be that much ahead of the outdoor ones anyway as the later planted ones tend to catch up. I normally plant mine in the last week of March or the first week of April, depending on the weather, and if it is cold I cover the buckets with plastic or fleece.

[Andraste]

I don't think wotters was planning on planting now, but waiting until conditions are favourable rather than sticking to a set time to plant is definitely advice I'm repeating to myself over & over this year.

I can find it quite difficult not be swayed by 'if your frost date is X, you should plant/sow on Y date' as I like that kind of clean cut rule but nature doesn't work that way.

In our area/frost date, it's suggested we plant early spuds in the last week of March. We planted on 09 April in both 2022 and 2023 - we could have done it earlier with the way the weather went in 2022 but the 2023 weather was so much different here that we should have waited around another fortnight for the ground to warm & dry.

I read somewhere (can't remember where) that seed spuds can go into a sort of shock going from chitting on the windowsill to being outdoors if the ground is too cold & wet - I don't know if that's an actual fact but it seemed to make sense for me after our experience last year.