How Do You Plant Potatoes That Have Sprouted?
It is very easy to plant potatoes that have sprouted. All you have to do is prepare your garden by mounding soil, be sure of the number of potato sprouts you have, cut them and do it by using a kitchen serrated knife, and then plant them. Make sure to water them and fertilize them.
Technically, you can plant any potato that has started sprouting, including the ones at the supermarket. Potatoes sprout for many reasons, both when you plant them in your own garden and when you pick and save them for later. You can plant the sprouted potato to grow an entirely new plant (or chop up a potato to make multiple plants!).
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Once sprouts are large, which typically happens about a month later, you can plant a sprouted potato into the soil, with the sprout facing upward. Cover the potatoes and sprouts with 2 to 3 inches of soil, leaving about 1 foot between each planting. Then, cover the potatoes with additional soil, as needed, until they are fully buried beneath 1-2 inches of soil.
| Process to plant potatoes that have sprouted | Shelf life |
| Prepare your garden by mounding soil, be sure of the number of potato sprouts you have, cut them and do it by using a kitchen serrated knife, and then plant them | In refrigerator 2-3 months |
| Make sure to water them and fertilize them | At room temperature Up to several months |
As your potato plants grow and mature, you will want to add more soil in the larger container, so their vines are buried primarily below the soil line. After carefully digging up your plants, return and work the soil back down by hand, looking for any potatoes that have fallen through to the bottom. If you planted the potatoes in a container, you could simply rake the soil and sift the soil for tubers once the plants have died down.
While you can simply plant your potatoes into soil, you get much more from them if you plant each sprout separately. That way, any sprout larger than 2 does not regrow, but the potato can concentrate all of its stored energy on growing, or producing, more sprouts right on time to plant.
A single sprout is needed to make a new plant, but potatoes are genetically engineered to make multiple sprouts in order to increase survival rates. Potato tubers provide lots of starch and nutrients, which the sprouts can use to grow into a new plant. Because potatoes are a tuber, and they have enough nutrients to support new growth, they do not require any soil for sprouting. They use their sugar reserves and other nutrients for making new plants, starting with the formation of sprouts.
However, unlike most saplings, potatoes do not need an environment for growth, like soil, at all times in order to start the sprouting process. Potatoes work as small seeds, and therefore require the proper lighting, temperatures, and right humidity conditions in the air in order to start sprouting. All you need is a sunny area for growing them, a constant supply of water, and potato seeds (the sprouted part of a potato you plant in soil).
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The advantage to sprouting/chitting your seed potatoes prior to planting directly into soil is that seed potatoes can begin growing, under controlled, warm conditions, before it is warm enough to plant them straight outdoors. If you have a good, well-drained soil, with good moisture content, then you can plant the trimmed seed potato pieces without curing. To plant potatoes which are already sown, you must consider the weather conditions, the potato preparation (chitted vs. cut), the soil conditions, and the spacing of potato plants.
Although, you may not have to plant every potato that has grown — it can be quite a few. If you do have a few potato plants from a store that sprouted, you could plant those, too — just keep them far from the rest of your plants if you are worried about blight. By growing your store-bought potatoes in containers, you will have an easy way to dispose of soil and plant matter should you experience blight. Yes, it is possible your sprouted potato from a grocery store will still develop blight, but it is unlikely blight will spread to your other plants, should it happen.
If you would like to mitigate your blight risk a bit, you could plant your grocery-bought sprouted potatoes in a planter far away from the rest of your garden. If you have a glut of sprouts growing on your potatoes, you are better off detaching a few of them by cutting them. Limiting sprouts to three or four will force your starter potato to focus all of its growing efforts on the remaining sprouts.
Leave some of the potato attached to each sprout, and be sure to hold all of your buds in an eye, together. You can cut potatoes that have multiple eyes into smaller pieces, giving the raw segments a bit of extra time to ripen before using them to make sprouts.
Small potatoes can be left whole, but larger potatoes can be cut into multiple pieces, provided that at least two eyes are present in each chunk. You can either sprout beforehand and plant the entire potato (two inches or less) as seed, or you can cut it up into pieces that have multiple eyes. Instead of planting seeds from the potato flowers, you will have easier, faster results by planting pieces cut or smaller-sized tubers called seed potatoes.
If you have a few potatoes that are starting to sprout (the eyes have grown big, white sprouts are starting to appear), just plant the sprouted potato pieces into soil or into a large planter ($3, Lowes) covered with 3 inches of soil. If your potatoes are truly rapidly sprouting, you can place them in some soil from the planter into a bucket (or you can plant them into the bucket during Sesaon!). Note that this is just one way of growing potatoes, and is better for a specific situation where you have potato seeds seriously sprouting in hand, one month before they are likely to be planted. Snap off just enough of the smaller potatoes to use as food, and return the soil so the others are ready for later.
Once plants have blossomed and the leaves have died off on 5-gallon buckets, harvest the potatoes. When the plants are around 6 to 8 inches tall, Hill your potatoes by lightly raking soil around the plant base, up to within an inch of the lowest leaves on either side of the row. Your potatoes will either have to hill” them as they grow, or be mowed from either side using any organic materials available to you (soil, compost, rotting leaves, etc.
Before the first leaves burst through the surface of the soil, the early potato plants do not require much water, and too much may eventually kill them.
Can I plant a whole potato that has sprouted?
You can plant a whole potato that has sprouted, and use it to grow more potatoes. In fact, you can get several potato plants and, eventually, a bunch of new potatoes from just one sprouted potato, assuming that you grow them right. All you require is a sunny space and a steady supply of water to grow a sprouted whole potato properly.
How to plant a sprouted potato?
Firstly, you should prepare your garden bed by mounding the soil into specific rows. Next, count your potato sprouts and cut each sprout carefully using a jagged kitchen knife. You should then plant your potato sprouts and continuously water and weed around your potato plants. Make sure that you fertilize your soil if it is not very rich.
What to do with potatoes that have sprouted?
The kitchen is the perfect place for them to begin growing “eyes” because all they require is darkness and moisture, but these extra appendages do not even mean you have to throw away your potatoes; once the sprouts have been removed and the potatoes have been cooked, if they still feel firm to the touch, they are still edible.