Forgot password or user name? Chitting seed potatoes. Posts Latest Activity Photos. Page of 1. Filtered by:. Previous template Next. Chitting seed potatoes , PM. I have some seed potatoes and wondered can I chit them in an unheated greenhouse? I also have some onion sets and wondered where the bet place to store them would be until planting time? Dark shed, light greenhouse, inside? Please be gentle, very new to this so apologise if I am asking stupid questions.
Well behaved women - seldom make history. Tags: None. Indoors, but cool. I chit my potatoes on the bathroom windowsill. Similar for onion sets, cool but light. Things tend to grow long soft useless shoots if kept dark and warm. By the way, we have a saying here on the Vine "No question is a stupid question".
Even then I cover them with bubblewrap at night if frost is around. Ian Pearson Acre Posts: It does work, but the other problem with a greenhouse is that on a sunny day, even in winter, the temperature can rocket, and the relative humidity drop. A steadier temperature and humidity is closer to what the potato would experience naturally overwintering in frost-free soil.
I chit under a window in an unheated room in the house. Debs Hectare Posts: 1, If at first you don't succeed, try and try again!! Ditto as for Ian - unheated, or cool light room is place for my spuds. You get a more constant temperature if chitted that way. Wouldn't put in my greenhouse as open to winds, cold and sometimes sunny warm days Debs. I agree an unheated room is often recomended, and I can see it is probably the best option, but as I haven't any spare rooms, the greenhouse is my only choice.
My potatoes did well last year, the chits were short and a good colour, and I got good yields. Thanks everyone! The spuds are now on tables and bales in the greenhouse covered in a layer of fleece!! I've noticed on the weather forecast that its going to b 0 degrees tonight so will get a frost, the greenhouse tends to stay frost free, however i am going to cover the boxes in old pillows during the night this week.
That should keep them safe shouldn't it? We do have a paraffin heater but I don't think they would mix well with bales of straw and cardboard Should be ok as long as we do not have a winter like last year Also watch out for mice and voles as they love potatoes and they can quite easily climb up onto a bench. I chit mine in the greenhouse each year and have never had any frost problems. When my wife starts to nag me about the amount of space I'm taking up it's really her greenhouse I move them to one of those 3 shelf plastic jobs and cover them with fleece.
They chit away til needed. What are people doing with their chitting potatoes when this really cold weather hits us this week? Will that be enough even if it goes -3 etc? Put your sacks somewhere bright, frost free and a little warm. Within 3 weeks or so, they will have begun to shoot. Keep the compost damp, but not sopping wet. Carry on earthing them up, bit by bit every couple of weeks, until they reach nearly the top of the bag.
Allow the shoots to come up to flower and you can start to harvest, usually by the end of November. We find that the flavour of the potatoes is better when potatoes are harvested and eaten straight away, rather than stored. When stored, some of the sugars in the tubers convert to starch and the flavour gradually disappears. For this reason, it's worth perfecting your potato milking technique: cut off a corner of the bag and put your hand in from the bottom.
Harvest and eat only what you need for that meal. You can then water from above and if you have not disrupted the root system too much, it should continue to grow. If you have several people to feed at once, you can turn out a whole bag at a time, it's easiest to do this into an empty wheelbarrow. It is a good idea to force some potatoes to give you an early crop to eat in May and June before the outdoor grown crop is ready. To force potatoes, plant tubers in an inside out compost bag or a potato planter in the greenhouse in February or March.
Follow the instructions for growing potatoes in bags above and they should be ready to harvest in May and June. The little black keel slugs are perhaps the worst pests to attack potatoes, as they do not go for the foliage, they wait until the new tubers start to form and burrow inside your perfect potatoes, only appearing when you cut them in half. Rotating the position of potatoes in the garden each year is also important, as it avoids a buildup of all pests.
Eelworms and wireworms burrow into potato tubers and can prove a nasty surprise on the plate. There is an organic solution which is to sow a catch crop of mustard as a salad crop or green manure after or before growing your potatoes — this acts as a biofumigant and helps control these pests as well as improving your soil.
Wilting caused by the fungus Verticillium is rare in UK gardens, as our winters are generally cold enough to kill off the spores.
Being soil born, frequent rotation is a good practice to follow. A warm wet summer is exactly what Phytophthera infestans loves, so keep an eye open for black spots on the leaves and stems and remove before they can infect the tubers.
With maincrop potatoes it is often best to remove all the foliage if you get an attack, and dispose of the leaves away from the vegetable garden. Usually the scabs on potatoes are superficial and can be scraped off before cooking.
They can be caused by the soil being too alkaline, so do not lime the ground before planting potatoes. Potato wart disease is caused by a fungus, and can be very serious. Thankfully our strict controls on selling only certified seed potatoes means that it has been eradicated in the UK. A bacterium on infected tubers is responsible for the occasional collapse of whole plants from the root up, early in the season. Remove the whole plant and destroy and this should stop it spreading.
If the yellowing is between the veins then this is usually due to a magnesium deficiency in the plant. A short-term cure is a foliar spray of Epsom Salts, but next year, make sure that soil has plenty of organic matter as this allows plants to absorb more minerals naturally.
Potatoes are particularly susceptible to cold, so if a late frost is forecast and the foliage is above ground, earth them up quickly with surrounding soil. If the leaves do get frosted the plant will recover although it will be set back by a few weeks until new shoots can come up from the tuber. Some people use horticultural fleece as a preventative, and this can offer some protection against a light frost. This does depend on the variety. Earlies can be planted more closely together 30cm apart, 60cm between the rows.
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