Potatoes....all those varieties...

[Ridgerunner]

Potatoes are clones. The genetics in any potatoes in the same hill should be identical, so it should not matter if you plant the little tubers or the big. If you buy seed spuds online they seem to send you mini-tubers. Little bitty things. I would not cut them. I only did that once, ordered from the Maine Potato Lady, so my experience with that is limited. Maybe someone that has ordered a lot of seed spuds online can share their experiences.

If you want genetic diversity plant the seeds that they develop. If you want clones plant the seed potatoes.

When I select which seed potatoes I want out of the bin at the local Mom 'n Pop I either select pretty small ones or ones just big enough with eyes so I an cut them once. I still get some good sized potatoes so I really don't think it matters. Now if you had a plant that produced nothing but the little ones, I'd argue that it does matter. But genetically I don't see any difference in planting the smallest one in the hill versus the largest.

I got five pounds of seed potatoes today at $0.55 per pound. By selecting the fairly small ones that will plant enough that I won't be able to use all I get if history is any guide. I don't have a good place to store them so they either get eaten fairly soon or they go into canned vegetable soup. I give some away.

 

[Beekissed]

That's what I sort of figured. We always planted chunks off medium or small taters and always got big spuds in return, so not sure if anything the man said has any validity. I'll see when I get spuds from these big, whole taters I planted last fall.

 

[catjac1975]

I had so many rot that I stopped cutting them. Now a plant the whole potato.

 

[Smart Red]

The size of my spuds has always been determined by the weather not by the size of tuber I plant. Even the year I cut 3 foot long eye growths off old spuds before planting them I got good sized potatoes in my harvest. As long as the spuds -- parts or whole -- have time to root well, they will do well.

Planting too early may cause rotting, but I seldom get the spuds into the ground overly early and I always let the cut ends dry and scab over before planting.

 

[thistlebloom]

I'm also one that plants the whole potato. Two years ago when I was potato planting I had some huge grocery store bakers in the pantry, so I planted one of those also just for grins. All the potatoes grew well and were healthy, including Mr. Gigantic Potato Head. When I harvested them, I was a little surprised to see that the big one didn't set equally big potatoes, a few pretty large ones and the rest just average. Not bad, but not spectacular like I had imagined.

 

[catjac1975]

In any hill of potatoes you will get a variety of sizes from giant to tiny. Certain varieties only produce small to medium spuds.

 

[baymule]

If I planted a potato back in the dirt after I dug the potatoes, it would come up and them die back in the summer heat. But them I bet my potato planting is a little different. Generally speaking, we plant in mid February (I haven't, have pigs in the garden) and harvest at the end of May. I have planted potatoes just for grins after the harvest, but got nothing. The idea of a potato lying dormant all summer, fall and winter until spring, just wouldn't work here. Too hot.

 

[Beekissed]

I'll see if it works here. I just left the few I had produced this year in the ground, then planted more later that fall from my brother's crop. The ones left from my own harvest had sprouted and leafed out above the hill, but I just covered them over with more leaves, wood chips and grass clippings. Each time they poked up, I covered them until it was too cold for them to grow.

Been checking those spuds and each one has one or two thick sprouts heading upwards, with many roots already forming off the tater. I'll be piling even more things on those hills here soon, so they'll have a long way to go to break through the top, but I expect they will do well this year. No rot noted.

We normally don't harvest potatoes until September, after the vines have died and dried, so the "planting when you harvest" thingy should work out well here.

 

[Smart Red]

I am anxious to find how the spuds did as well. What a good idea to keep the growing by covering them.

 

[digitS']

The potato farmers are concerned about the number of stems per foot. Of course, they don't want empty space but they also don't want a multitude of sprouts and too many (small) tubers forming.

They actually treat seed potatoes so as to limit the number of stems. link

Yeah, that's right. It's dismaying to learn how much chemical use plays a part in the production and storage of any crop, I suppose. It just give us more reason to grow more of our food, ourselves.

Steve