New (to me) chitting advice

I was quite surprised to find this advice on a seed potato suppliers site tonight, I say urprised as I have never seen any other gardener offering this before.

Do any of you use this method or similar?

Steve...

 

Seems extreme, but I'm not sure it is dubious.

We use to cut seed potatoes in half (to get more) and dust the wound with flowers of sulphur - so I don;t suppose "peeling" the spud a bit will hurt it.

Fewer eyes will result in fewer "plants" from a single spud, which in turn equates to fewer, bigger, spuds. I have never really bothered about it, but I was thinking this year to rub out all bar one or two chits from a half dozen seed tubers at the end of the maincrop row - to try to get Bakers.

I suppose using shoulder, rather than rose, eyes / chits would mean that they were a bit further apart. ut if you're going to that much trouble don't forget to take the flowers off too as they will be sapping at least 0.000001% of the plants energy and therefore reduce bulking up of the crop

 

The above quote came from the JBA seed potato site's article about chitting, http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/Chitting_Potatoes.html

I just thought the info conflicts with most articles I have read whereby the advice is to use the rose end chits. And I never knew chits would regrow if rubbed out.

I might just try a whole row using this advice, for later comparison.

Steve...

 

Me neither, but it makes sense (chits regrowing)

Maybe the (normal) advice on chitting the Rose end is to make it easy to stand them in an egg box and for the majority of people to get a 100% successful outcome?

There's a forum on the JBA site ... I'll leave you to report back, eh?!!

 

JBA youtube video


[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-LpFhQfTtU&feature=player_profilepage[/video]


Steve...

 

From another thread:

I was given that advice by some one from T&M (Colin Randall, Randel? vegetable product manager) on how to get big spuds at a local potato day. He didn't mention physically removing eyes, but they do re-grow and it does seem like a good idea to try a few using that method for comparison. Another bit of advice he gave was to use big seed potatoes to get the biggest spuds.

EDIT: I'll be seeing 'the man' from T&M in just over a week, so I'll quiz him on this.

 

I have just checked mine in the egg boxes and most of them where upside down..!
Thanks Steve

 

Just thinking ahead - does anybody have any questions they'd like me to ask and post the replies back here?

 

.

If you are trying to grow exibition potatoes, then you rub all eyes out except one, for the rest it does not matter one hoot!

On a Which trial and also GW a couple of years ago, they found it was beneficial to chit earlies but the rest chitting had no effect at all!

The main thing is not to keep them in a bag in a warm dark spot, then they will sprout like mad, on the video, "one ton of potatoes" shows about the correct length.

People worry too much about wether they should chit or not chit, main thing no long shoots as they rot when planted!

Cheers!

 

If folk don't chit though they most probably have them in the dark somewhere and they will grow long chits - which, as you say, will rot and in my experience break off easily during planting.

Sticking them in the fridge (if you ahve space!) when they arrive may prevent them starting to chit, but if they have been somewhere warm already - e.g. garden centre - the process of breaking dormancy will probably already have started, so even putting in a fridge they may still grow :(

Hence I advise people "to chit" without worrying about whether it will make any tangible difference to their yield etc.

 

Well, i've tried it with mine, lets see how it goes.

 

Oh Chit !

(Sorry, couldn't resist any longer:DOH

 

I've grown many successful crops of spuds over the years (its the one crop I've become quite good at ).

I've found that out of all the many different factors to take into account, the single most important factor is the quality of the ground they are growing in. The more manure, the bigger and tastier the crop.

I've never tried any of the more technical techniques though. I just prepare the ground, shove them in, and bank them up every time the top growth gets to about 6 to 8 inches high.

I've only ever had one bad crop, I suspect it was blight but not sure. On that occassion I'd put them in ground that was prone to becoming waterlogged (I didn't realise that at the time I planted them), and I went away on holiday right at the critical time when they should have been banked up.

 

Good advice Steve thanks, I have got my potatoes from the JBA site and now I'm just waiting for my egg boxes