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Vegetable Gardening

Long Sprouted Seed Potatoes

9 years ago

Planted my potatoes yesterday and everyone of them had a 10 inch sprout coming off them. I didn't want to break them off , and didn't think planting them with the sprout coming out of the soil would be any good. I opted for laying it sideways with other eyes upwards, and gently curved the sprout towards the seed and up. The sprout still has about 5 inches of soil to travel

Anyone have similar experience , how did things end up?

Featured Answer

digdirt2

9 years ago

Not over all yield but individual potato sizes, yes it can. Multiple sprouts are the norm depending on the size of the seed piece planted.

Some claim if they trim the sprouts back to 2-3 they get larger potatoes but less overall in number. Others prefer to leave them alone and get more but smaller potatoes. It's your choice as long as you make sure to provide enough nutrients and water as the plant needs.

Dave

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Comments (6)

digdirt2
9 years ago
Had a discussion about this just a week or so back.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/4536434/seed-potatoes-sprouted-a-lot?n=10

Most recommended removing those sprouts or at least rimming them back. And one of the other posts about this said "When potatoes sprout in the dark, they are white and long: NO GOOD FOR PLANTING. twist them off."

Several other posts about the question the search pulls up but they all mostly agree - remove those.

Dave
Chippah
Original Author
9 years ago
thanks
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Chippah
Original Author
9 years ago
Planted 9 of the Kennebec mentioned above that all had multiple 5-6 inch long sprouts coming from them. I didn't pull any of them off just gently curved them around the hole the buried.

Now i would like to say ALL made it to the surface and sprouted, but I've counted 14 green sprouts coming up and i planted 9.

Is this common for multiple sprouts to make it up and grow? I thought only 1 per.
hairmetal4ever
9 years ago
Some of my potato plants have as many as six shoots. Others have one or two.
Chippah
Original Author
9 years ago
do you find that effects yields at all?

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