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Plant sprouted potatoes to avoid waste and get a nice, unexpected harvest of fresh potatoes. It happens to all of us at some point: there, at the back of the cupboard, a few stray potatoes go wrinkly and start to sprout. But don’t throw them away!
Grow potatoes from your old grocery store potatoes instead. It’s really rewarding and really simple, and it helps to reduce wasted food. Follow my easy guide to planting sprouted potatoes and you’ll be harvesting potatoes from your yard in no time.
Can You Plant Sprouted Potatoes?
Yes, you can plant sprouted potatoes. If you have space in your yard, there’s really no reason not to plant old sprouted potatoes.
You shouldn’t, however, plant sprouting potatoes if they’ve gone mushy or show signs of rot or mold. If they’re moldy or rotten, the potatoes won’t grow, and you risk introducing new pathogens to your soil, which can potentially infect any other plant you’re growing.
You should also exercise particular care if you grow peppers, tomatoes, or other nightshade family plants, as they’re of the same family as potatoes, so bacteria and fungi that attack potatoes will usually go after your peppers and tomatoes, too.
Can You Plant Store-Bought Potatoes?
Yes, you can plant store-bought potatoes if they’re got sprouts or buds. I wouldn’t generally try to sprout store-bought potatoes, though, as they’ve often been sprayed with an anti-sprouting chemical that inhibits bud or eye growth. But if they manage to sprout naturally before you can eat them, then yes, go ahead and plant those grocery store potatoes.
Seed Potatoes vs. Store-Bought Potatoes
Is there any difference between seed potatoes and store-bought potatoes? Yes, there is. As I mentioned above, grocery store potatoes are often subjected to a sprout inhibitor, so they may not sprout at all or at least won’t produce as many sprouts.
Seed potatoes, on the other hand, are grown and prepped specifically to sprout. And they’re often bred for disease and pest resistance, particularly for the home grower.
Potato Blight
The biggest risk of using store-bought potatoes is bringing potato blight into your growing space. Potato blights are any of a number of voracious, fast-spreading blight diseases that attack potatoes, nightshades (think tomatoes, peppers, and aubergines), and an array of other edible and ornamental plants.
Even a single infected potato can kill off huge swathes of your crops, from potatoes to corn, fruit, and squashes. Blights show up as little brown or black circles on the undersides of leaves, then rapidly spread, killing off foliage, stunting growth, and, in some cases, causing the whole plant to rot and die.
And it won’t just be your potato plants that suffer this devastating infection. The blight will spread, and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. Plus, of course, it can stay in your soil for years. To get rid of blight, most people try to avoid planting anything that’s susceptible and practice clean watering. But, if that fails, which is often the case, they have to sterilize their soil to try to kill off the bacteria or fungal spores causing the problems.
I grow potatoes alongside a lot of other crops, so I’ll always choose to buy seed potatoes over grocery store potatoes. Or, I’ll replant my own potatoes that I harvested the previous year. As long as you cure them and store them properly, it’s surprisingly easy to save harvested potatoes for seed potatoes for planting next year.
If you do want to grow potatoes from the grocery store, I strongly recommend growing them in containers, potato planters, or potato bags rather than directly in the ground, so that you can contain them and stand a better chance of controlling blight if it occurs.
How to Plant Sprouted Potatoes Step by Step
Planting potatoes, even sprouted potatoes with long, leggy sprouts, is easy. But there are a few things you need to get right if you want to grow potatoes. Follow these steps for growing potatoes whether you want to plant seed potatoes or sprouted potatoes from the store.
1 – Choose the Right Conditions
Pick the right time for growing potatoes. The potato plant is sensitive, and frost can kill it quickly. Although it can tolerate more cold than the minimum temperatures tolerated by peppers, a potato plant is still tender and cannot survive frost. So think about the time of year and whether your area will experience frosts before the potatoes are ready to harvest, bearing in mind that you’ll need at least 70 days from planting to get new potatoes, and 80 to 100 days to get full-size potato harvests.
If you’ll be cutting it close to frost dates, there are a number of ways you can protect your plants from frost. The easiest way for an ad-hoc potato planting is to simply keep them sheltered and undercover, such as in roomy containers or grow bags in a greenhouse or polytunnel. If your greenhouse isn’t heated, you can always insulate it with a layer or two of bubble wrap to keep the temperature high enough to keep your potato plants alive.
2 – Prepare Your Sprouted Potatoes for Planting
If you’re reading this article, it’s more than likely that you’ve already got some sprouting potatoes. So, we won’t go into chitting potatoes to get them to sprout in this article. We’ll save that for a whole ‘nother post.
But you can harvest more potatoes from your sprouted or seed potatoes surprisingly easily. Chop ’em up! Make clean cuts, chopping your potatoes into pieces, leaving at least one bud or sprout on each piece to grow into a new plant.
Just don’t go too mad. I try not to cut a really large spud into more than 6 pieces, as the potato itself acts as nutrients for the new plant as the potatoes begin growing. With smaller potatoes, I’d only do three or four pieces, maximum, depending on the number and placement of sprouts.
Leave the cut pieces out in a dry, sunny, airy location to “scab over” or dry out for a few days. The cuts should seal over and go a bit leathery to the touch. Don’t skip this step, as it prevents the potato pieces from rotting in the soil before they start to grow.
3 – Prepare the Planting Site
If you’re growing potatoes from the store or you can’t leave them fully exposed in the ground because of the danger of frost, choose a nice, roomy container or potato bag. This is a nice little affordable potato planter that you can use year after year. Or, these cheap and cheerful potato bags are a good option, too. Standard containers should be at at least 2 to 3 feet tall and hold a minimum of 15 gallons. In general, larger is better, as you’ll get more potatoes if you give the plant more room to grow its tubers.
However you’re planting, you need to make sure the area gets plenty of full sun. Ideally, 6 to 8 hours per day. And partial shade the rest of the daylight hours.
If planting in the ground, choose an area with light, well-draining soil, as potatoes don’t like wet, boggy soil and will likely rot instead of producing lovely big harvests. For containers, choose a rich, free-draining potting soil and add some extra drainage in the form of stones or gravel in the bottom of the container.
For direct sewing, dig trenches around 4 inches deep, with at least 12 inches between potatoes and 3 feet between rows. This reduces competition for space, water, and nutrients, ensuring when you harvest potatoes, you’re not disappointed with the size and quantity.
4 – Plant the Potatoes
Place each potato or potato piece in the trench, bag, or container with the healthiest looking sprout facing upwards. Yes, that’s right. Upwards. Those rooty-looking sprouts are not, in fact, roots, they’re stems.
Remember to leave 12 inches between potatoes.
Now cover up your sprouted potato pieces or seed potatoes with 4 to 5 inches of soil. Now just relax and watch your potatoes grow.
Caring for Your Growing Potatoes
Potatoes shouldn’t need a ton of water, but, depending on your climate, if the top couple of inches of soil get dry, you’ll need to provide water.
Stick your finger in the soil near a potato plant and see how dry it is. If it’s plenty moist enough, don’t water. If it’s dry, give the plants a drink.
But be careful not to overwater, particularly in the early days before the potato plant has emerged, as too much water can rot the sprouting potato, as noted by Oregon State University and every seasoned potato grower around the world.
To get more potatoes from your potato plants, you might want to consider hilling them. Building a mound of soil around each potato plant as it grows taller avoids sun damage, helps to grow a stronger plant, and encourages bigger potatoes and more of them.
Hilling is super easy. After every 6 inches of growth, you cover up 3/4 of the plant with fresh soil. Leave the top 1/4 exposed to photosynthesis and growth can continue. You may need to do this three times during the growing season.
TIP: You can also use an impromptu hilling to protect potatoes from an unseasonal frost. While the exposed portion of the potato plant will still die, the covered portion should survive. So, the following morning, when the temperature rises, just uncover the potato plant a bit and let the surviving leaves continue to grow.
When to Plant Sprouted Potatoes
You can’t plant sprouted potatoes at any time, but remember that potato plants are tender, so take into account frost dates. If you want to grow them without protection, plant potatoes at least 70 days before the first predicted frost in your area if you want new potatoes or 100 days before the first predicted frost to harvest full-size potatoes.
Alternatively, plant them in containers in a covered, heated, or insulated greenhouse or polytunnel.
RELATED POSTS: Everything you need to know about chitting potatoes
Where Should You Plant Sprouted Potatoes?
Plant sprouted potatoes from the grocery store in containers in high-quality potting soil to limit the risk of blight spreading to the rest of your garden.
For direct-sown seed potatoes, grow them in a sunny spot in well-drained soil with plenty of nutrients. Remember, for the best potato harvests, the plants need at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day.
How Deep Should You Plant Sprouted Potatoes?
Plant sprouted potatoes around 4 inches deep, with 12 inches between potatoes, and 3 feet between rows.
How Far Apart Should I Plant Sprouted Potatoes?
Plant sprouted potatoes 12 inches apart in rows, with 3 feet between rows.
Should I Hill Sprouted Potato Plants?
You don’t have to hill sprouted potato plants, but it’s a good idea. Hilling, or earthing up, ensures stronger, healthier plants and bigger, better potatoes with a lower risk of sun damage. It also helps to keep weeds down, which reduces competition.
Do You Plant Potatoes With Sprouts Up or Down?
Plant potatoes with the healthiest sprouts facing up. Did you know that potato sprouts are not roots? In fact, potato sprouts, while they look like roots, are actually new stems. Hence you need to plant potatoes with the sprouts facing upwards so they can push up through the soil and produce thick, healthy stems and lush green leaves to fuel tuber production beneath the ground.
Do You Have to Cut Sprouted Potatoes Before Planting?
No, you don’t have to cut sprouting potatoes before planting. But, if you want more potatoes and you only have a few seed potatoes, it’s worth it, as long as each seed potato has multiple sprouts.
If so, you can chop up the potatoes so that each piece has one or more healthy potato sprouts and a good sized chunk of potato to pull nutrients from while it grows.
And remember, you’ll need to leave the cut places in a dry, airy spot for a couple of days to scab over so they don’t rot when you plant them.
How Long do Potato Plants Take to Grow?
While it varies, a general rule of thumb is that potato plants take 70 days to produce small new potatoes and between 80 and 100 days to produce a full-size harvest.
Why Do Potatoes Sprout?
Potatoes sprout because they want to reproduce and, no matter their conditions, potatoes, like many plants, will try their very hardest to reproduce.
Those sprouts that look very much like roots are the stems, called stolons, that produce new plants or, for those stolons that remain underground, new tubers, or the potatoes that you’ll dig up when the time is right. You’ll dig potatoes and find each potato attached to a stolon.
Conditions that speed up potato sprouting include where you store them being too warm and too light. But don’t be tempted to store them in the fridge – that’s too cold and your potatoes will quickly go bad.
Strangely, storing potatoes with onions speeds up sprouting, too. There’s a scientific reason behind that. As onions age, they release synpropanethialsoxide, which is a gas that encourages potatoes to sprout. Onions also pull moisture from potatoes, ageing them prematurely and causing them to rot.
How to Prevent Potatoes Sprouting
There are several things you can do to stop potatoes sprouting:
- Don’t wash them – if they have dried mud on them, leave it there until you’re ready to use them
- Keep them is a cool, dry place. A pantry or an insulated, rodent-proof outbuilding like a garage is ideal
- Store them with an apple. Sounds weird, but the ethylene gas produced by the apple inhibits sprouting
- Keep them in a well-ventilated, natural container like cardboard or wood.
- Never store potatoes in plastic as it traps heat and moisture
- For short term storage, keep potatoes in a paper bag
How to Harvest Potatoes
When it’s time to harvest potatoes, it’s supremely satisfying. Even if you grow store bought potatoes, you’ve still grown potatoes yourself. You’ve grown your own food and, with a little care, you can store that food for many months.
Harvesting potatoes in containers is ridiculously easy. When the time comes, you just lift the plant, give it a shake, and pick up the loose potatoes. Then you can turn out the container and find the rest of them.
When digging potatoes out of the ground, make sure you place your spade or fork at least 18 inches from the base of the plant to avoid hurting any potatoes. You want to put your spade or fork deep in the ground, slowly working the handle back and forth so that you can lift/scoop the soil close to the plant to loosen it and find any potatoes. Keep doing this, working around the potato plant and slowly working inwards.
Curing Your Homegrown Potatoes
If you want to grow potatoes for longer term storage, you need to cure them. After you dig potatoes from the ground, you need to brush off any big clods of mud. But be gentle – you don’t want to damage the skins. And never wash the mud off. The idea of curing is to dry them out and toughen up their skins so that they’ll last for months before going bad.
Move the potatoes to a dark, well-ventilated space with a temperature of 45 to 60°F (7 to 15°C) and leave them there for between 7 and 14 days. This is plenty of time for the skins to harden up and for any minor injuries to seal over.
Note that you should only attempt to cure healthy potatoes. Those with scab, insect damage, or digging damage should be used right away or discarded.
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