To chit or not?

[Mole]

My experience:

Chitting seed potatos seems to give an earlier crop, but makes no difference to quantity produced, therefore is only useful for the first earlies.

Is this your experience

Mole

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Mole, i always normally chit all my potatoes, but i think it was on gardeners world where they did a small trail with chitted and unchitted potatoes, the chitted earlies cropped heavier than the unchitted, but the unchitted lates cropped heavier than the chitted lates.
But i think there could be a lot of if's and but's with a small trail like that, for example the unchitted earlies might have cropped as heavy as the chitted, but just a little bit later.
I personally don't think that there would be a massive difference how ever you do it, people should just do things that they feel most suits them.

Of course i'm sure my way is the best.

[Jenny Green]

I seem to remember potato guru Alan Romans writing a few years ago that chitting increases the speed with which you get a crop, as the potatoes have already done some of their growing before you plant them. So chitting is ideal for earlies, where speed is of the essence. But for lates it decreases the crop because they've had less of their potential life in the soil accessing water and nutrients.

[Alison]

Now that is really fascinating and makes sense!
I haven't received my seed potatoes yet, but I do remember last year it was SO cold and wet that we couldn't plant them for ages, and I just couldn't keep them in reasonable condition, so we had a poor crop.
So what's the best way to keep them dormant? Presumably they have been stopped from sprouting by the producers, but my own potatoes were sprouting before Christmas, even though they are kept in a cold larder that is usually dark, and covered from the light.
Alison

[Allan]

The thing to avoid is those long shoots before you plant, so they are best kept cool but frost free but with enough light to keep any growth sturdy. If growth is unavoidable and not many to do you could start them in pots of compost. They are closely related to tomatoes so most techniques apply to both e.g. you can grow from stem cuttings.

[Hannabusses]

They are closely related to tomatoes

Awsome fact i didnt know cool like that! thanks i guess the leaves are similar looking but id not have guessed.

[Colin_M]

They are closely related to tomatoes

There's a family connection between potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines and deadly nightshade. This worries some people (eg. our local T'ai Chi group) who recommend avoiding all of them as a result!

Further background here:
http://www.organicfood.co.uk/inspiratio ... foods.html


Back to the question - are we decided if chitting really helps, or have people found that sowing spuds in a rush without chitting has produced equally good results?

Colin

[peter]

Bit of a tangent, hopefully Johnboy will know the answer.

What happens commercially?

Having seen the machine my local spud farmer plants with I'd be surprised if any sprout longer than a millimetre survived its transit.

I can remember a simpler device with men sat in it, supplied with boxes of seed potatoes from an adjacent towed trailer. But that was when a spinner was state of the art harvesting technology and I was a little boy.

[Johnboy]

Hi Peter,
Commercial growers simply would be wasting time money and effort trying to chit potatoes. They are in potato boxes that are kept in cold store until they are needed for sowing and then they are taken out of cold storage and they begin to form eyes and they are planted then and earthed-up in the one movement. They receive very little attention throughout the growing period. The agronomist keeps an eye on them and any sign of blight they are sprayed with a copper based fungicide. If slug damage is apparent the crop is is spread with pellets.
We suffer from an abundance of Keel Slugs in this area and the pellets seem to draw then from the soil because when they are lifted you can see early slug damage that has been repaired by the potato itself.
I only grow a few early potatoes for myself, which I chit, and the main crop I gleam from what is left by the contractors.I still use my Potato Spinner for this process. I should think that this spinner is quite old as it was my grandfathers and he died in 1960 and he had a great many years work out of it and quite possibly was not new when he bought it.
I would not chit main crop Potatoes.
JB.

[Allan]

Colin wrote
Further background here:
http://www.organicfood.co.uk/inspiratio ... foods.html

Allan replies
Lots of facts here which are interesting, but a better example of extremism in interpretation in the whole website would be hard to find.
Not for nothing was the homegrown tomato crop given top priority during wartime to boost the nations health when imported fruit was impossible. Modreration in all things.Even oxygen and water can kill.

[Tigger]

In the States and Canada - because of the great distances and potential carriage costs - they distribute chitted potato slips to gardeners rather than whole potatoes.