Starting potato transplants, good idea?

I'm thinking of starting seed potato (Irish) in biodegradable planting containers for later transplant into my towers and beds. I'm hoping that will make it easier to keep up with hilling and allow me to get an early start. (So much for planting on St. Patrick's day! We just got a foot of snow, with more on the way!)

What do you all think? Has anyone done this?

Hi Gilbert,

My thought is try an experiment. Plant some in biodegrabable pots and some directly in the garden. Compare the results at the end of the season. It might work out okay to use transplantable containers if the plants are not kept that way for very long. Keep it short term.

Happy growing,
Becky

I agree that the best thing you can do is experiment. We can tell you what works for us, but it's not necessary what will work for you. There are hundreds of 'right' ways to do this kind of thing.


In an old book about farming, I think it was early 20th C, I read about a fella who took slip cuttings from potatoes.

He encourage the potato to sprout and send up shoots, then used the shoots as cuttings to grow new potato plants which he started in pots then planted out when the frost was over. The potato sent up more shoots, and so on. In this way he was able to plant almost a quarter acre with one potato (or so he claimed).

I did it a couple of years ago. I didn't even use biodegradable containers but potatoes seem to transplant very easily.

It didn't seem to be worth the trouble, the ones planted directly in the ground did as good as the ones started earlier and transplanted.

I may need to do it again this year though because of the squirrels (or who knows what) who keep on dining on the potatoes that i put i the ground.

For now i'm cutting off the parts of the tubers with eyes, pretty thick ( bake and eat the rest ) and then plant them deep enough so the occasional frost we still have ahead of us won't damage them.