Kitchen Garden Forum

In the Telegraph today a lady has written in saying she plants potato peelings and gets a good crop. When her pottoes start developing protruding eyes, she peels them and saves the peel in a dark sack. When she has enough for a line of potatoes she digs a trench, sprinkles them in and covers with soil. And she is very pleased with the crop this provides. I've occasionally thrown the odd potato peeling onto a border and had asmall potato plant appear but didn't realise you could actually grow a satisfying crop by this method. However, I'm surprised the peelings didn't start to rot or degenerate in the sack before sufficient had been accumulated to plant them in the trench.

I read that too, Primrose, and I think it's a bit risky. Proper seed potatoes have to be certified as to diseases but with shop bought or even home grown potatoes (althoug perfectly good to eat), you would never know what you are propagating for another year. I think I would rather start off with a clean crop and know what I am getting.

Excellent thread..!!!

I would be so tempted to give it a go as an experiment! I'm always amazed at how many of my volunteers are dug up perfect the following year when in their first year they were scabby or attacked by slugs. They are generally smaller but still very usable. As for the peelings from shop bought I would think the farmers who grew them would have used certified spuds as it's their business so not gonna muck around & risk their livelihood. I just might give it a go, maybe in a sack to be totally sure though! Not sure about the saving of them, so would probably plant them as the peelings arrive.

Why bother ,the price of sets is not that expensive why risk three months work ,papers will print anything to fill a space

Ah Robo! Where is your sense of adventure? I would never just rely on the peelings without a back up but it does make you think people relied on this method during the war times so has a little bit of credibility - however just as an experiment, not as a real crop & I'm sure the other girls will be doing the same. I experiment all the time, some wins, some losses but none interfere with the real growing.

Sounds a good idea however my peeling are thin & go straight into the compost bin.

Regards the "volunteers" as you call them seemed to have them all over my plot, left over from previous owner.

As we (the under-gardener & I) try to support our local shop, we can grow as many spuds as we can eat from a single bag-full (a small paper bag about 6"). We layer in the bag, early, second early, main crop and salad tubers and end up with easily enough to keep us going through to the time they are sprouting.
We can't really buy fewer tubers, so throwing some back isn't really worth it.

I found the time to dig my last 2 rows of main crop Picasso - dead impressed! I had cut the foliage off about 4 weeks ago, as it was not supporting any crop as it was yellow & had done it's job. I was a bit concerned at what I might find, but they were huge, some had grooves in them from erratic watering but I have some beauts & very limited damage from pests! Still have wire worm in that bit of the plot though but they must have found something more tasty (next door maybe)!