Can You Plant Green Potatoes? Will They Grow?

on October 20, 2022

Potatoes are one of the most popular vegetables grown in the garden at home because they are quick and easy to produce and will yield large amounts of food with little effort. However, if you have some potatoes at your place that have gone green and can no longer be eaten you may be wondering whether it is possible to plant those potatoes as they are not much use for anything else.

Green potatoes can be planted quite happily in the garden and they will grow and produce a successful crop without too much effort. However, if they are store-bought potatoes that you are planting they may be a little bit slower to grow because many of these plants have a growth inhibitor applied to them to prevent sprouting and increase shelf life.

When planting seed potatoes you can typically expect to get somewhere around 4lbs (2 kg) of potatoes per seed potato that is planted provided that you allow the plant to grow to full maturity. However, if you are growing potatoes in grow bags generally the yield is much lower and typically you can expect to get around 1lb (500g) of potatoes for every seed potato plant.

Can You Still Plant Potatoes That Have Already Sprouted?

The other common problem associated with having older potatoes at home is they can begin to sprout and you may be wondering whether it is ok to plant these potatoes as well. The answer to this is absolutely yes because the fact that they are sprouting is an indication that they are viable seed potatoes that will grow in the ground.

In fact, many gardeners that are growing potatoes actively encourage the formation of shoots before the potatoes go into the ground using a method called chitting which is when the potatoes are left out in the light to start the production of sprouts.

Is It Better To Cut Seed Potatoes In Half Before Planting Them?

One of the other common practices which some gardeners do is to cut seed potatoes in half before planting them. This is generally done to maximize the amount of potatoes that you get from each seed potato.

This is considered to be a good practice provided that the size of the potato chunks that you are cutting up are reasonably large to ensure that there is a sufficiently large amount of the tuber present in the ground to fuel the initial growth of the plant. Typically, having potato chunks that are approximately the size of a golf ball is absolutely ideal.

The only downside of cutting potatoes in half is that there is a greater risk of disease particularly if the potato tuber is allowed to sit in the ground in the ground in cooler weather as the tuber has the opportunity to rot if left for too long in wet damp soil.

How To Maximize The Yield Of Potatoes

To get the most out of the potatoes there are several things that you can do which will help to increase the yield by up to 50%. The first thing that we highly recommend is that you plant seed potatoes at a depth of approximately 1 foot deep and approximately 1 ft apart.

This is particularly important because seed potatoes are only produced in the ground directly above the initial seed potato so having the seed potatoes relatively deep will provide more space for the plants to produce tubers. Additionally, having them approximately a foot apart also ensures that potatoes are not competing for space with other plants.

The second thing that we recommend is that you place well-rotted manure or compost at the base of the planting trench before you put the seeds potatoes in as this will help to ensure that there are adequate nutrients for the potato to draw upon when growing.

The third practice recommended that is extremely important is to ensure that you earth up or mound up around the potato plants as they are getting larger. Doing this has two benefits, the first is that it ensures that any potato tubers that come to the surface remain covered and therefore do not turn green.

The other benefit is that the additional soil pushed up around the plant will provide additional opportunities for the potatoes to produce a greater number of tubers that are also a little bit larger which in academic studies has been shown to increase the yield by 20 to 50%.

Lastly, the other important thing to do is to ensure that the potatoes are not harvested too early in the season as this will not allow the tubers to fully develop underground. Typically, it is best to harvest the plant a few weeks after the plant has flowered or even wait until the plant has died back completely and then dig up the potatoes.

How To Grow Potatoes

As mentioned at the start of the article potatoes are an extremely easy plant to grow and they require a little effort. To start the plant off you can chit the potatoes which means that you are exposing the seed potatoes to light for approximately 2 to 4 weeks before planting them in the ground which will initiate the production of sprouts.

Chitting potatoes is not absolutely essential to getting a high-quality crop but it does make a significant difference if you were growing early potatoes as it increases the yield in early potatoes significantly. When chitting the potatoes it is best to place them in an area that gets plenty of light but does not get very warm so somewhere like a greenhouse is absolutely ideal for doing this.

The seed potatoes should ideally be planted no earlier than 2 weeks prior to the last frost. The reason for this is that potatoes are a frost sensitive plants so planting them approximately 2 weeks prior will ensure that the sprouts appear just at the point in time when there is no further chance of frost

As mentioned earlier in the article ideally potatoes should be planted in trenches approximately foot deep with manure being placed along the base of the trench. Once the seed potatoes are in position the next step is to cover them over with soil and then wait for them to appear.

When the foliage of the potato plant reaches a height of approximately 1 ft it is advisable to begin to earth up the plant. Earthing up the plant can be done with any material that excludes light, however, doing it with the soil surrounding the plant is ideal as it provides a greater volume of growing medium to produce more potatoes.

When earthing potatoes up you should ensure that there is still a small amount of foliage appearing at the top of the mound as this will allow the potato to continue to photosynthesize. The mounding-up process should be done a couple of times throughout the season to ensure that you maximize the volume of soil around the plant.

As mentioned earlier in the article, the earliest you should ideally harvest potatoes is around 3 to 4 weeks after they have flowered. However, generally, if you want to absolutely maximize your potato crop it is best to wait until the plants have died back completely. Once this occurs you should be harvesting all your potatoes and storing them in a dark cool location to maximize their shelf life.

In the right conditions, potatoes can last approximately 6 months which means you should be able to eat everything that you grow in your garden and get the most out of your efforts.