Expert gardeners will all tell you to use seed potatoes...I always have problems finding them so for the last umpteen years I have planted the ones from the grocery store...Never had a problem....

The seed potatoes are probably treated with a fungicide or some chemical to make them "clean" but that's OK I don't like that "chit" in my garden anyway...you do what you have to do.

Seed potatoes are grown especially for the purpose of planting. They are carefully monitored and inspected for disease. The crop must meet certain standards to become certified. This is extremely important to farmers who must keep their fields disease free to stay in business year after year. It is less important to home gardeners whose livelihoods will not get wiped out if their gardens become infected with blight.

My local garden store sells certified seed potatoes of several varieties by the pound. The mail order sources have a far more extensive and interesting list of varieties.

Ditto the comments about sprouting. Grocery store potatoes always seem to sprout for me.

Jim

One of two reasons for seed potatoes has been covered. Certified disese free which is not necessarily true of table stock. A second reason is to get the cultivar that you want and that is likely to grow in your area. Some table stock does not fare well in all sections of the country. For example Idaho Baking potatoes are long season russet types which fare poorly here. Despite all the hype about sprout suppression, I have not encountered table stock that did not sprout. Most rural farm and garden centers will have bulk certified stock which is not a much more expensive than table stock. Choices are usually limited to two or three of the more popular cultivars for that area. Here that is Pontiacs and Kennebecs, a little further north Yukon Gold is added to the choices.

I plant both. I save sprouting potatoes from my own stock (some French and Swedish fingerlings), and save some "planters" from potatoes I buy at the store that I especially like. As long as they're not late-maturing baking potatoes, they make interesting plantings. I also buy some certified seed potatoes and they are definitely the sure things. A good seed potato should give you at least four planting pieces, so they go a long way. Locally adapted varieties almost always out-produce my gourmet experimental plantings, but they're all great fun and fantastic food.

Here is a link that might be useful: my website

I planted store potatoes in my box last year and this year I planted something else in the box...onions, peas and radishes...and there are several potatoes sprouting in there...I obviously missed a few spuds when I dug last fall.

I've pretty much given up on certified seed potatoes -- not only are they expensive, costing about $0.79 a lb here the past few years, but the places which are carrying them are dwindling rapidly. I now have to drive about 25 miles each way to get to a farm supply which would have them.

I just plant grocery store potatoes -- I watch for them on sale about 4 to 6 weeks ahead of planting, so that they will start to sprout a bit when I plant them (I have had store potatoes which took months to sprout after I planted them - obviously treated, I now make sure they are sprouted before planting).

I've never had any disease problems. I dust mine with fungicide at planting time to help ensure this. Have had great results this way, and much cheaper. I bought a 10 lb bag of Russets last week for $1.99, and got a 5 lb bag of white potatoes for free the other day at Meijer's as part of a buy 10 items, get one free promotion, so I just stocked up on Joy dishsoap, which was also $1.00 for 32 oz bottle, a really good price, and got my seed potatoes for free.

I still have to pick up red and Yukon gold types -- am watching for a sale. Even if I can't find them on sale, they would be slightly cheaper per pound than Certified Seed Potatoes would be.

I've pretty much given up on certified seed potatoes -- not only are they expensive, costing about $0.79 a lb here the past few years, but the places which are carrying them are dwindling rapidly. I now have to drive about 25 miles each way to get to a farm supply which would have them.

I just plant grocery store potatoes -- I watch for them on sale about 4 to 6 weeks ahead of planting, so that they will start to sprout a bit when I plant them (I have had store potatoes which took months to sprout after I planted them - obviously treated, I now make sure they are sprouted before planting).

I've never had any disease problems. I dust mine with fungicide at planting time to help ensure this. Have had great results this way, and much cheaper. I bought a 10 lb bag of Russets last week for $1.99, and got a 5 lb bag of white potatoes for free the other day at Meijer's as part of a buy 10 items, get one free promotion, so I just stocked up on Joy dishsoap, which was also $1.00 for 32 oz bottle, a really good price, and got my seed potatoes for free.

I still have to pick up red and Yukon gold types -- am watching for a sale. Even if I can't find them on sale, they would be slightly cheaper per pound than Certified Seed Potatoes would be.

It's not surprising that table potatoes don't typically harbor the blight because blight makes them unsaleable, for one. But generally table tubers are pretty clean because many growers are both table and seed producers. If an outfit is a seed-producer then basically their whole operation has to be disease-free.

I have very limited space, so not only are seed potatoes expensive, I really don't need pounds of any one variety. I have procrastinated this year-since I got most of this year's seeds from trades, I haven't had to order from the catalogs, so I was thinking of visiting a grocery store that is a bit of a drive, but near where I have an upcoming appointment this week. They have a great produce department, & much of their stock is certified organic. They also buy from local growers when possible. I was thinking that the organic potatoes would have less chance of being treated in any way that would prevent sprouting. While they will still be more expensive than the 'taters I have in the kitchen, I would still have a selection in small enough quantities for my garden, I would save shipping, & I would have them this week. What do you think?

I agree that an organic grocery would be a good source for untreated potatoes. I ordered certified seed osme years ago and enjoyed the interesting fingerlings I got - but don't use enough potatoes to justify growing a big crop.
OTOH reading Fedco's Moose tubers catalog is enough to make one swear off store bought potatoes.

I only grow Red Pontiac potatoes.
I buy 3 lbs of them from the produce dept at the grocers. We usually eat one meal from that bag.
The rest I plant. I simply cut them into chunks so that each piece has one or more eyes. Dig two shallow trenches & line them with hay. Then, drop in the spuds, cover with more hay and then mound soil up over that. I plant some kind of fast growing, shallow rooted flowers in between the two rows. This acts to camouflage the potatoes plants from potato bugs. Cosmos or marigolds work great, or I plant a row of beets or bush beans in between. In about two months I can begin to dig for "new potatoes" by gently pulling back the soil and hay. They are about the size of ping-pong balls. These potatoes have a much better flavor and texture than their potato parents did, buttery and creamy textured, and no chemicals or pesticides. I usually get 40-50 pounds of potatoes out of about 2 pounds of 'seed' potatoes. Well worth the investment in money and time.

sweetannie4u

That's a huge return, Annie. What do you use for fertilizer?

I heard recently that chamomile deters the CPB really well, too.

FWIW- I never had potato scab until I used table potatoes. Scab can make the potatoes unusable & lives in the soil just about forever.
GumbyCT

Scab is almost completely correlated with soil ph. As the garden soil gets richer, the ph typically rises also, and scab starts appearing.

Of all garden produce, potatoes like the lowest pH, about 4.8. They like loose, sandy loam best. Where weeds grow, potatoes will love it. But where Lamb's Quarter grows, they do not do well.

They are great companioned with Horseradish. Both benefit form one another. I've never tried Chamomile with potatoes, but have planted it in with Asparagus to keep beetles away, so I can see how that would work just great! Thanks for the tip!

I do not water my potato patch once the plants emerge unless we are in drought. I lost last year's crop due to too much rainfall. The plants came up and looked great but the rain continued non-stop for three weeks. They all drowned and rotted. Bummer :(
I didn't replant. Too wet.

I don't fertilize, per se, but I do use old chicken litter or rabbit litter hay from the henhouse floor and nest boxes and/or from rabbit's cage. I clean their living quarters out four times a year and pile it in the corn patch and where I will plant my potatoes in spring, usually around St. Patty's Day. Don't have potato bugs and never have had diseases or fungus problems. The good Lord sends pestilence where there is disease and weak plants. Being a good steward to the land and employing good gardening practices is imperative to having good balance in all things. We are all the beneficiaries when we do.

sweetannie4u

Certainly Ph encourages potato scab as does the use of manures.

"Of all garden produce, potatoes like the lowest pH, about 4.8. They like loose, sandy loam best. Where weeds grow, potatoes will love it. But where Lamb's Quarter grows, they do not do well."

Dang! What's Lamb's Quarter have to do with it? I was planning on planting a whack of potatoes at my community garden this spring (warm, sandy loam soil) but it is just rife with Lamb's Quarter and Purslane. Any adjustments I can make? I'm looking at a serious change in plans here (as I gaze at 100lbs of seed potatoes I bought yesterday!)

Thanks,

Tim

The thinking that USED to be taught back in the day when I was an intern gardener working on a commune farm was that Lamb's Quarters enjoys a higher soil pH than do potatoes.

Also that Lamb's Quarters attracts beetles that attack your potato plants. These beetles also were said to transmit the Mosaic leaf disease to potatoes.

To change the soil, we would pile on compost, old hay, leaf mold or fall leaves and grass clippings, and manure in the fall where we were going to plant potatoes the following spring. That fixed the problem.

I would suggest that you mix in a heap of compost or well-rotted manure and/or hay or leaves.

Never add potash (or wood ashes) where you plant potatoes.

This works for me....but maybe I don't know so much.

Best of luck with your p'tators!

Annie

My experience has been that as you add all kinds of organic matter over the years, no matter what kind, ph rises. IF the soil is acidic to start with - which in the eastern half or two thirds of the continent is a near certainty. Oklohoma though I believe has a native soil that is alkaline, so adding those amendments has the opposite effect - ph drops. The real effect of of raising the organic content of the soil is to balance the ph, whether the native condition is above or below 6.5. So long-cultivated gardens anywhere tend to get in the 6.5 range, which is too high for scab-free potatoes, and thus the problem. Tim, I'd go ahead and plant that stock, no need to waste it. Those weeds indicate that the soil is fertile so you'll get great yields. Taters are fine to eat with scab, they just don't look so good and don't store as well.

Thanks for the info, Annie - it makes sense. I gardened at this community garden for half a year last year, and the people there I talked to told me that they either didn't use any fertilizer at all (the soil is very fertile) or else they just added lime (which goes a long way in explaining all the lamb's quarter, and how well it seems to do!)

As it turns out, I dumped a bunch of leaves on my plot last fall which will be plowed in in the next few weeks, so that will help some. And I've got a 4x4x4 composter full of shredded leaves from last fall, so I guess I know where some of that is going :o)

Thanks for the informative post. I learned something today!

Should be a challenging year. Not only do I have the lime to contend with, but deer and ground hogs are also a problem. And for good measure, there's 8 black walnut trees on the far side....

Cheers,

Tim

I have also read that potato beetles prefer eggplant to potato plants. So if you are willing to sacrifice an eggplant or two, put some near your potatoes and if there are cpbs in the area, they will go for the eggplant and leave your potatoes alone. I personally don't care for eggplant anyway, so I'm going to put a few of them by my potatoes this year and see if it helps...

Most soil in Oklahoma is old red clay. In fact, part of my land is clay up on the ridge. But the soil around my house is native red sandstone sand - very course, very porous and very alkaline (tracks and blows into the house - ugh!).

Potato Scab is more likely to develop if the pH is raised by applying wood ashes or lime. It is more prevalent in limey, sandy soils, (like mine) and where ample amounts of organic matter is sadly lacking. I have to continuously add hay, leaf mold, compost, composted wood chips, composted manures, shredded leaves, &etc., to ALL my growing areas.

Organic matter is not fertilizer - it is a soil conditioner. Adding organic matter does not raise the pH of your soil, merely its tilth and health.

Some of my veggies enjoy an application of wood ashes in spring, (except potatoes). Beets and carrots enjoy a light application of lime or wood ash. It also helps blooming plants produce more blooms, so is great applied to the bean patch when plants begin to bloom.

Of course as with most things we must use prudence - there is wisdom in not applying more than is needed. Too much of a good thing is too much, be it manure, wood ashes, water, or whatever.

BTW - If you are planting eggplant to draw beetles away from your potatoes, I wouldn't plant them near your potatoes. Otherwise you might just lure the little buggers to your potato plants.

Happy Gardening!
~ Annie

Tomorrow I will plant a row of seed potatoes, but today I planted the platter of potatoes that's been sprouting in the pantry. These included:

>A few particularly tasty Yukon Golds saved from a 5-pound bag bought at the store in December.
>Several small red potatoes from the store that started sprouting before I could cook them.
>About 30 of a line I call Swedish Fingerlings that I've been growing for about 8 years, in 3 states! They're early and they love me.
>A half dozen of a late-maturing, red-streaked French fingerling I've had a couple of years, originally saved from a pricey package of Melissa's gourmet potatoes at the store. Great for roasting.

So, yeah, plant seed potatoes, but also get to know a few varieties, and save them and replant them for a few years. In your climate and mine, we can save 'em for replanting by burying them a foot deep in the fall, then lifting the planting them in spring. It's that easy.

Here is a link that might be useful: my website

re: the Colorado beetle - I've had excellent results hilling with leaves and/or straw instead of dirt. I haven't seen a beetle in 5 years, and it used to be a major nuisance.

Interesting idea to bury potatoes for over-winter storage....

Cheers,

Tim

We raised potatoes for years. Here is a little I know about seed potatoes. Potatoes (tubors) are "clones" unless you use TPS (true potato seed). (very small seeds produced on the top of the plant in small pods) TPS can produce off spring that are different from the parent.
There are a couple of ways of propagating new seed potatoes. Tissue culture is one, and there is a newer one that uses hydroponics. There is pre nuclear, nuclear, G1-G6 (generation) As each year goes by for producing seed stock the offspring have a higher probability for getting disease. Also the yield can start to taper off for each successive generation. After G6 we say the seed is "run out" They use stringent testing to check for disease. Good quality eating potatoes can be as good as seed potatoes but are not tested for certification. For example G3 seed grown for table stock might be as good as G3 grown for seed. However table stock is not tested for disease. G3 grown for seed becomes G4 for the following year.
If you cut the seed, make sure the cut side "heals" for several hours to a few days (depending on humidity and temp). Tops mancozeb is a common seed treatment used to prevent disease in cut pieces. Also, eating potatoes can be treated to prevent sprouting so they may not work for seed.
One disease that is particularly bad for potatoes is late bight. The newer A2 mating is very aggressive. Humidity plays a big part in this disease. Monitoring stations keep track of humidity and after adding numbers up in a special formula spraying notices are sent out to growers. After you start spraying you have to continue through the season to keep it from getting a toe hold in your field. This winter I took some sprout tips and grew some potatoes in small pots. I am going to try to try them this spring for seed. They look disease free and I am curious how well they might produce.
Here is a link for some info on potato growing.
http://www.panhandle.unl.edu/peyes.htm
Alex Pavlista is well known in potato circles.

I hill up with a lot of straw mulch too.
Knock on wood, but no beetles in the 12 years I have lived and gardened here. Mother and I watched two beetles fly over my patch a few years ago, but they didn't stop. My mother was amazed!
My Grannie used to plant corn, next to potatoes, and beans on the other side of the potatoes. She said the corn and beans hid the potato plants from the Colorado Beetles. Maybe so.

Gosh! All this talk about growing potatoes...I hope it warms up and dries out soon so I get get back out into my gardens! Been cold, windy, and raining here for two weeks after a month of warm, calm, perfect weather. It's like March and April traded their weather.

One year in March it got so hot that my youngest son put on his shorts and played out in the sprinkler on the lawn. It was well into the 80s. By noon, a cold front moved into the state and the temps dropped rapidly, so that by 4 that afternoon it was snowing and we got three feet of snow! He just went into his room and put his snowsuit on over his swimming trunks. He looked seriously at me and said, "Just in case it warms back up again Mom, I'm gonna be ready for it!" :)
That's Oklahoma weather for ya!
~ sweetannie4u

Yep, wood-ash is good stuff - I use it like crazy. Not much danger of raising the ph too much around here.