How to Chit Potatoes: A Guide to Greensprouting Seed Potatoes

Chitting potatoes is a simple process that involves pre-sprouting your seed potatoes before planting. Chitting your potatoes will encourage them to produce more shoots and ultimately provide a better yield.

Article Outline:

1. Why Chit Potatoes?
2. How to Chit (Greensprout) Potatoes
3. Can you cut sprouted potatoes before planting?
4. When to plant chitted potatoes
5. What about sweet potatoes?

Why Chit Potatoes?

Potatoes are typically grown from seed potatoes rather than actual seeds. Seed potatoes are small potatoes specifically grown to be planted as a crop. Green sprouting, also known as chitting, is an optional seed potato conditioning procedure. Chitting the potatoes before planting allows you to encourage them to produce more shoots, resulting in a more abundant harvest.

Although the benefits of chitting potatoes have been heavily debated, studies have demonstrated that chitting can reduce the days to harvest time and may increase yield. This is important for areas with shorter growing seasons, like the low desert of Arizona.

How to Chit (Greensprout) Potatoes

Timing:

• Begin chitting about four weeks before the expected planting date.

Initial Warming:

• Store uncut seed potatoes at 70°F (21°C) in the dark for about a week.

Exposure to Light:

• Once sprouts appear, expose the tubers to bright, indirect light.
• Lower the temperature to 50°F (10°C) if possible.
• Light will turn the sprouts green and keep them short and stocky.

Note: Sprouts that form in the dark will be long and spindly. These fragile sprouts break easily and may not grow as well.

Can you cut sprouted potatoes before planting?

Ideal Size:

Seed pieces should weigh about 1½ ounces (42 grams). Ensure each piece has at least two eyes/sprouts.

Cutting Guidelines:

A seed potato 3 ounces (85 grams) or larger should be cut in half. Smaller seed potatoes can be planted whole. Medium and large seed potatoes should be cut into blocky pieces, usually 2-4 pieces per tuber. After cutting the potatoes, let the skin dry and form a protective layer.

When to plant chitted potatoes

After the sprouts are approximately 1 inch (3-4 cm) long, it is time to plant your potatoes. To speed up emergence, plant seed eyes facing up at a depth of 1 to 4 inches (2.5 -10 cm). Plant shallower in cooler northern climates and deeper in warmer southern climates. Generally, plants will break through the soil in approximately 3 weeks.

What about sweet potatoes? The differences between growing sweet potatoes and regular potatoes

Sweet and regular potatoes might appear similar, but their growth habits and planting requirements differ. While potatoes grow from the sprouts on the potato, sweet potatoes are grown from slips that are removed and then planted. Slips are small plants that grow off of a mature sweet potato. Learn how to make sweet potato slips in this blog post.

Chitting potatoes is a simple yet essential step in potato planting. It allows you to encourage your seed potatoes to produce more shoots, ultimately resulting in a more abundant crop.

More potato growing resources:

• Learn how to grow potatoes in straw in this blog post.
• Growing potatoes in containers? Get growing tips in this blog post.

Research sources:

• The duration of chitting significantly decreased the days to emergence and tuberization, suggesting an earlier harvest time (Springer).
• Chitting could give higher yields earlier in the season before late blight ended crop growth (Springer).
• Chitting seed potatoes at Craibstone increased yields (Cambridge Core).
• Cchitting/pre-sprouting, especially using more blight-resistant main crop potato varieties, can further reduce foliar blight severity and increase yields (ScienceDirect).
• Efforts to increase tuber yield should focus on reducing the time to emergence, suggesting that chitting could play a role (Luke.fi).

In summary, while the results may vary based on various factors, chitting can reduce harvest time and increase yield in certain circumstances. However, more research might be needed to fully understand the impacts and how they may vary under different conditions.

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