Growing potatoes

My dad and I have grown many a decent crop of spuds over the years. All we do is keep any of our shop bought spuds that have sprouted before we could use them, and just plant them in well manured ground.

The orthodox standpoint seems to be that only seed potatoes are acceptable, but from the crops my dad and I have grown I can't understand why.

What am I missing? I understand that if we were taking our produce to a show, then only the best seed stock would do, but we just eat them. Why spend lots of money on seed tatties when natural wastage from shop bought spuds work fine?

 

As far as I can tell, it is all about having certified disease-free seed potatoes, ie. no contamination or spores of fungus on them. It is perfectly possible to grow shop-bought spuds, but I suppose the risk of the crop failing should be taken into account.

 

See I've never had any problems with crop failure as before I understood about seed potatoes and stuff (this was when I was like 12) I use to plant all my mums old wrinkly/sprouted potatoes and they'd crop loads:skp:

 

Clueless, I`ve done that before now, and as the saying goes, if it works stick with it. As long as you and your dad are happy with the crop , that`s all that matters.:gnthb:

 

Excellent, thanks for the replies. I was starting to think my dad and I have been committing some heinous crime without realising it

Between the two of us, we have only ever had a total of two crop failures. One time my crop was decimated by some parasite (I blamed slugs at the time but have since read about a worm that targets spuds). Another time my dad got my mate Paul to help him plant his spuds, and all the ones Paul put in (most of them) failed to grow. Oddly enough that same year, I got Paul to help me with mine, but I had already planted most when he arrived, and only the last few rows (that Paul had helped with) failed to grow.

 

So, can we ALL blame Paul for our failures?:lollol::rotfl:

 

Yes, why not

 

So does that mean I could try chitting some of my Robinta and Charlotte potatoes I dug up this morning (well dug out of their pots!!) ?

 

Thanks for the tip about that, i didn't realise that.

 

Spuds aren't native but come from the Andes, where it's too cold for aphids to live, and spread viruses. Here, any self seeding spuds would eventually succumb to disease after a few years. Certified virus free spuds are grown about aphid height (2000m in the UK, although my memory could be wrong).

As Dai says, if it works, good luck to you!