Holy Potatoes!!

Sooo, I planted some potatoes in a big 25 gallon bucket using Mels Mix and instructions. He says to wait until the leaves shoot up and cover them again. I had nice sprouts with sturdy leaves that were about 2-3 inches high, so yesterday I covered them again with Mels Mix. This morning the leaves popped back up already. Not just barely either! 3 of the 5 plants are high above the soil again!

Is this normal? They must have grown 2-3 inches overnight.

That is good! I think about 5 or 6 inches growth, then put mm just leave the very top leaves showing until you finally get to the top of your container.
Jo

yes
potatoes grow rapidly

I just found some organic old & sprouting white potatoes in the back of a cupboard. I saw online that I can start one indoors so I'll do that with a 5 gallon bucket. But I hate to waste the rest of them. If I dig deep enough, can I plant them outside now even tho there is a little snow on the ground?

CC

CC, potatoes will grow quickly when the weather and soil warm s up. If you plant them now there is not enough heat for the plant to have cell division, there is not enough sunlight hours, the plant will freeze, resulting in plant cell destruction and death.

plant cell destruction and death.

AWWWW I am curious if anyone else has grown potatoes indoors? and cc for how long would you keep in indoors and how many taters per 5 gallon bucket.
could this be a cure for the wintertime blues....

I'm not really a white potato eater but my mother is. So when I found these organic ones all sprouted I looked online and saw a guy in Canada on youtube who grows his potatoes completely indoors in pots.

I really don't have much of a plan other than to put about 5 or 6 inches of compost/MM in the cracked-on-the-bottom bucket, plant one old sprouted potato piece, put it in some sunlight, then cover with more dirt as it grows I guess. I'll put the bucket outside in partial shade maybe in April? I just wish I had the space and means to plant all of them. Maybe if I just leave them in the cupboard til April they'll survive? Or be completely rotten and stinky. Beats me.

Hope that helps.

CC

CapeCoddess wrote:I just found some organic old & sprouting white potatoes in the back of a cupboard. I saw online that I can start one indoors so I'll do that with a 5 gallon bucket. But I hate to waste the rest of them. If I dig deep enough, can I plant them outside now even tho there is a little snow on the ground?

CC

i say plant some inside, outside and save a few for spring planting....then keep us posted on how the growing goes!!

if they do well inside growing....that will give us something to watch grow over the winter!

I have some taters n the garage that r wrapped n newspaper until spring. They've been out there for weeks n haven't rotted.

OK, that's what I'll do - I'll plant some inside and some outside, then wrap the rest in newspaper and put the in the garage.

Thanks for the ideas, folks. I'll keep ya posted on this 'spearament.

CC

OK, I already need help please. These potatoes concern me. They look like aliens crawling on the side of the moon. Is that how they are supposed to look?

Do I cut off the small chunk of potato with an alien attached to it and plant that? or do I carefully remove the alien and just plant that? This is kinda hard...

CC

There are several back threads that explain preparing potatoes for planting. Some potatoes need chitting before planting. Here are a few links for more information.

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t11521p30-potatoes?highlight=chitting+potatoes

http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/scenec6be.html

CC: each "alien"/eye/nodule/root is a new potato starter. You can let them sit a bit longer to see if you can get about 3-6 more starters on the same potato. Then, carefully cut your potato so that each piece has an eye/alien. Let the pieces sit on a pan and dry for 1-2 days and then plant under a few inches of soil with the eyes/aliens down (though I'm not always precise on this). Very soon, you will have green tops emerging. Let the foilage get about 6" and then cover w/ more soil/mulch and keep repeating this till you've got a   depth. I think that part is different for each person.
FYI- letting the pieces dry a bit before planting protects your starters from rot and other disease.

Good link, Camp, thanks. That Cornell comes thru every time.

OK, the organic Yukon Golds are sliced, chitted and planted. I just watched a video by Mel where he plants 4 pieces in a 5 gallon bucket. So I started mine over with 2 inches MM at the bottom, then put in 4 chitted pcs and covered.

It's too bad that they sprouted so early for my area, but I seem to be able to pull thru in a pinch, so I'll just have to trust that I'll know what to do by the time these guys are crowding me out of this tiny cottage.

I don't think I should plant any outside right now as it would be too wet no matter now deep I go. But I saw a big pot downstairs that might hold 2 more.

As for the newspapered/garage batch...*burp*...I ate what was left...mashed with onion soup mix stirred in. Oh boy was that good. There's a ton left for tomorrow, too.

Thanks for the help everyone. Now we wait.

CC

CapeCoddess wrote:Good link, Camp, thanks. That Cornell comes thru every time.

It's too bad that they sprouted so early for my area, but I seem to be able to pull thru in a pinch, so I'll just have to trust that I'll know what to do by the time these guys are crowding me out of this tiny cottage.

I don't think I should plant any outside right now as it would be too wet no matter now deep I go. But I saw a big pot downstairs that might hold 2 more.

Thanks for the help everyone. Now we wait.

CC

Good thing you decided aginst planting out of doors, you are forecast for 4"-8" of snow in the next 48 hours.
Some of my store bought potatoes are starting to sprout as well, but I am still just eating them. I can buy more for next month and I know those should be sprouting too. You MAY be able to put some out of doors around late march.... But the foliage will have to be protected until the threat of frost is past.

It's hard isn't it, the waiting.

My potatoes did it again! I covered them with another few inches of soil (in a big bucket) and again this morning, they are popped up already.

I followed Mels instructions in the book and cut up some store bought potatoes with eyes on them, about 2 eyes per piece. Let them dry (cut side up) for a day and plant them ~ eyes up! It has worked famously without any trouble. Plant, water, grow, bury ~ water, grow, bury, until you get to the top of the container. It looks like I'm going to have a bumper crop.

Is it normal to be this excited over a potato plant? LOL

that is pretty cool, I gotta try that inside though. My potatoes did not grow that fast outside even in mels mix... Must be a perfect ratio of sun, water and MM.

Someone else posted here asking if potatoes survive under the snow, I had always thought that they were too wimpy so I harvested all of my potatoes LONG before it froze.
HOWEVER while I was digging up my carrots I found a huge potato down there with the carrots, and it was thriving.
So perhaps next year I will plant some winter potatoes...

Amazing, Jackie! Btw, thanks for the idea. Your post just happened to coincide with my sprouted forgotten potato discovery so I've started my own bucket. Hope I have your luck.

So interesting about finding a potato under the snow, GWN. I may join you with winter planting. When do you think you'll plant your winter potatoes?

CC

GWN wrote:

Someone else posted here asking if potatoes survive under the snow, I had always thought that they were too wimpy so I harvested all of my potatoes LONG before it froze.
HOWEVER while I was digging up my carrots I found a huge potato down there with the carrots, and it was thriving.
So perhaps next year I will plant some winter potatoes...

I have heard of making a cache of potatoes in the garden, but never of not gathering them first at all. But for all you people where the ground does not freeze too hard or deep I bet it would work. My dad used to not need to replant his potato patch in the spring because of the missed ones that would sprout up. He would plant in the bare spots and then cover deep with leaves and let it be till fall. Here I never have missed potatoes sprout in the spring, our ground freezes too hard and they all turn to slime.

Good luck GWN and CC... keep us updated. Because I'm in Florida and we dont have cellars or long, cold winter months, I've read that we can create our own root cellars using sand. I bought some clean sand box "play sand" and put it in a 25 gallon container. You can also use a cooler. I bought potatoes from the store to try this. Put some sand in the bottom and put the potaotes in so they are not touching eachother, more sand, more potatoes, etc. They say the potatoes (or apples or other root vegs) will keep for 6 months in there. Some say to dampen the sand, others say not to. I'm trying it with dry sand.

The compost may be the difference, I'm new to this so I cant be sure. Mel said to use 5 diffferent kinds of compost. I could only find 4 kinds for sale around me. I used mushroom, hen, worm casings and cow. Then I methodically measured one bucket of this and one bucket of that. I made sure I had the 4 composts mixed together well and then used 1/3 of that with 1/3 peat and 1/3 vermiculite just like the big man said. Hope that helps!

Jackie, how long after you planted your bucket potatoes did they take to sprout above the dirt? I planted this past weekend and thought I'd see something by now but didn't, so today I moved the dirt away a bit so their little points are now showing.

CC

Maybe I missed something, but it appeared Mel just used the compost component in his potato container and not the complete MM.

The title of the YouTube clip is, "Mel Bartholomew talks Potatoes and SFG." (New forum members aren't permitted to post links.)

CapeCoddess wrote:
So interesting about finding a potato under the snow, GWN. I may join you with winter planting. When do you think you'll plant your winter potatoes?
CC

I plant my Irish potatoes twice a year, first around February 1, and the fall crop about August 15.

by Pollinator on 1/25/2013, 8:29 pm
I plant my Irish potatoes twice a year, first around February 1, and the fall crop about August 15.

Pollinator - When planting potatoes on Feb 1, do you have to use some type of frost/freeze protection? If so, what do you do to keep them from freezing? A few times each year we can get down into the teens for a night.

pollinator, what zone are you in?' I do not think I COULD plant potatoes in February here.

CC, These potatoes I planted in the spring and I guess I just did not harvest them all in the fall, I had always thought with the cold weather, they would just freeze. It has been a very mild winter here thus far though.

I guess my point is really that perhaps one could leave some of their potatoes to be harvested in mid winter ?? Like Carrots,?