If you are thinking about growing your own potatoes, you’ll need to think about starting your seed potatoes off in a sunny place before planting them. This is known as chitting potatoes. You’ll want to know how to chit potatoes before you embark on growing your potatoes.
Chitting Potatoes
What is Chitting Potatoes?
Quite simply, chitting potatoes is allowing your seed potatoes to grow and sprout before planting them. It’s a simple process and will give you a heavier crop, particularly for the earlier varieties.
Why Chit Potatoes
You don’t have to chit your potatoes before planting them, but it gives them a good head start and should give you a better yield if you do. It’s particularly advisable to chit seed your seed potatoes if you are growing early and second early varieties. If you don’t wish to, you don’t need to chit your second cropping potatoes.
When To Chit Potatoes
If you are planting your first early potatoes, you should think about chitting them from the end of February. Second early potatoes can be chitting from March. Maincrop potatoes can be chitting from around the same time in March. Second cropping potatoes really don’t need to be chitting, so you can plant these straight away in August-time
How To Chit Potatoes
The process of chitting potatoes is best done by placing your seed potatoes in an old egg box on a sunny windowsill. You should inspect the seed potato for any early growth and place the seed potato with the side with most sprouts facing up. The seed potato will start to sprout and in around 4 – 6 weeks, when the shoots are around 1 inch in length, your seed potato will be ready to plant.
Can I Cut Seed Potatoes
Yes, you can. This can be done to increase the number of plants you can grow. You’ll need to make sure that each half (or part) of the seed potato you cut has sprouts on it, but this is a good way to increase your yield. If you are cutting your seed potatoes, you are best to leave the cut portions to dry for a few days before planting.
Can I Plant Supermarket Potatoes?
It’s not recommended to plant old potatoes. The crops can be unreliable and you also don’t really know how good quality the potatoes are that you are growing. Eating potatoes are different from seed potatoes and may have been through other processes which would not be favourable to growing good quality home-grown potatoes. Seed potatoes aren’t particularly expensive, so you’d be better off buying yourself a few good quality seed potatoes and growing from them instead.
I hope that has answered all your questions on how to chit potatoes, why you should chit potatoes and more. If you have any other questions, feel free to pop them in the comments below.
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