I have never bought potatoes on line, but I have saved some potato suppliers mentioned in other threads. Moose Tubers, affiliated with Fedco seed has some available in March. Potato Garden has many listed as in stock. Pinetree says they ship mid March through April. Peaceful Valley says has some available in April, and some not till Oct 2018, which leads me to believe you should order from them in September. Wood Prairie has varieties for sale that don't appear to be out of stock.

Have you contacted Johnny at Vision Farms (FB)? I don't know where he got his potatoes starting out, maybe he has some he would sell you. He might be a good source of advice because he only recently started large scale gardening and any pitfalls will be fresh in his mind.

I ran into this problem last year, Kim. I was just searching online and see many nurseries that specialize in potatoes. . . I may spend some time doing more research on them (reviews, where they are, what their growing rules are. . .) I found one last summer, as NO ONE had seed potatoes, it seemed, in July. I'm thinking they were in Washington. I'll be following your post, to see what others have to say. Ha, Amy. I was just reading about Potato Garden. Sounded promising.

This is common. Go to your local feed-and-seed store and check with them. Most of the feed and seed stores here like Atwood's and TSC get their seed potato in right after Christmas---sometimes in late Dec and sometimes not until January, but certainly in plenty of time for planting.

When you order from places further away geographically, they won't ship while their weather still is freezing cold (even though, of course, they keep the seed potatoes in controlled cold storage) because they don't want for the potatoes to freeze in transit. The Potato Garden will ship earlier than most because they load up a truck and haul the potato shipments to Phoenix and ship them from there. I'm pretty sure I've had orders from them ship in February. The Potato Garden will ship in November, which is what they recommend for people in areas that need to plant in January and February. You get your shipment in November and hold it in a cool, dark place until your planting time arrives. That is the route you might want to take next year.

And, for fall potatoes, you need to order for the latest shipping time you can get in spring---some places ship until May, and hold those potatoes in cold storage until fall planting rolls around. Newly harvested potatoes have to be kept dormant a certain period of time before they will sprout, and in most areas that raise seed potatoes, the harvest is so late in summer (unlike our earlier harvests here in the south) that those potatoes never would sprout in fall because they wouldn't have been held for a long enough dormant period. That's why none of the big online seed potato sellers ship for fall planting---they cannot antagonize customers by sending just-harvested seed potatoes that never will sprout in time for a fall crop.

Online seed potatoes are hugely expensive compared to seed potatoes from local feed-and-seed stores. The prices online are ridiculous, but I've paid them a couple of times in order to try a specific variety that is not sold locally. It is not a cost effective method.

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn!

Do I have to buy seed potatoes or will organic potatoes work the same?

To some extent you can do whatever you want. I've used organic grocery store potatoes before and they worked just fine. However, I'm a home gardener and am not trying to transition to a Certified Organic operation under NOP rules.

Also, understand the risk of disease. Certified seed potatoes have been treated to prevent the common diseases that wipe out potato crops. Grocery store potatoes, whether sold as organic or conventional, presumably have not. So, without certified seed potatoes, you're putting the crop at a higher level of risk. How high the risk would be in an area like yours that generally does not have high rainfall or high humidity is something I do not know.

Do you trust that the organic potatoes on a grocery store shelf really are organic? Do you have faith that some stock guy didn't mess up and put the non-organic potatoes in the area where the sign says organic potatoes? Hopefully, you can find organic potatoes sold in bags that so state they are organic so that you know for sure they are organic and weren't mixed up after arriving at the store. I'd think such mixups, if they occur, only occur with unlabeled bulk potatoes. The reason this matters is that y'all want to transition to a Certified Organic operation and under NOP rules, you have to have records of what was grown on the land for the last 3 years. With grocery store potatoes you won't even be able to list a potato variety---you'll just be able to list 'russett potato' or 'red potato' or 'white potato' or whatever since some grocery stores don't label their potatoes by actual variety name.

So, if you aren't buying certified seed potatoes, you are taking some degree of risk that (a) maybe there was a mixup at the grocery store and the potatoes aren't actually organic, and (b) the chance of disease wiping out a crop that wasn't treated/certified for use as seed potatoes exists.

If none of that matter, buy at the grocery store but understand the potential price you may (but also may not) pay down the road.

What you can do/should do/need to do as a commercial operation that will seek organic certification within the next 3 years is very different from what a home gardener might be comfortable doing.

With each decision you make, think about it from the NOP point of view. If you haven't read the NOP manual yet, I'd read that first. There are exceptions to the organic seed restrictions---one of them being that non-organic seed can be used if organic seed does not exist. However, with potatoes, tons of organic certified seed potatoes do exist.

Since you're growing commercially and intend to seek organic certification in the future, you have an added layer of potential restrictions to consider now over and above what you had as a home gardener or as an independent market grower.

Dawn. . . . I tried the "organic" potatoes when I planted them in the middle of August, from Walmart. They were in a bag labeled organic. Well, nothing happened. I got maybe 4 small potatoes out of 10 plants. the plants looked great, grew like crazy, and began wilting and dying back in October. There were few tiny little nubs. Is it possible I did something wrong? Of course--though we haven't experienced it with other potatoes we grew last year or this. Can you think of why? My immediate reaction was that I wasn't going to try organic potatoes from Walmart again! LOL I chitted them first. I meant to ask you about this 2 months ago, but just chalked it up to the potatoes' fault or mine. We planted them the same way we've planted potatoes in the past. I wondered if I did something wrong, and knew that was a very real possibility.