Sprouting Potatoes: Is It Necessary?

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Many of us have almost such a tradition: every year, about a month before planting potatoes, we take out the planting material, sort it out and, spreading it in a thin layer in a box, put it in a relatively bright and cool place so that sprouts appear on it. Then we select potatoes with strong, strong and thick sprouts, which we will subsequently plant in the garden

Is it necessary to sprout potatoes at all? Maybe it's enough to get it on the eve of planting and just throw it into the hole at a certain time and cover it with earth, let it sprout right away on the spot?

Why do you need to sprout potatoes

It is necessary to sprout potatoes, from this operation, which takes a little time (which cannot be said about the occupied space), there are a lot of benefits.

Firstly, if potatoes are stored in a cold room or in a cold basement, then the appearance of sprouts on it lasts a very long time, from five weeks or more. And this means that if such a potato is planted immediately in the soil, then you will see the seedlings in more than a month. Accordingly, the growing season decreases and the yield decreases. And if you plant such seed material in unheated soil, then there will be no harvest at all, since supercooled seeds in rather cold soil will immediately begin to form small nodules instead of growing green mass. This means that you will not get the harvest.

Secondlyusing properly prepared planting material, you can reduce the number of irrigations, and this is important at the current tariffs of housing and communal services, as well as in places where there is tight water for irrigation (for example, in some dacha cooperatives and partnerships). In addition, intensive root growth at an early stage allows the most efficient use of the spring time, when there is still sufficient moisture in the soil. In addition, with the early development of the roots, the "baby" tubers in the potato bush begin to lay even in not fully heated soil, which leads to an increase in productivity and allows you to get a harvest even in rather dry years.

Thirdly, seedlings appear in pre-germinated potatoes much earlier than in planting material without shoots. Planting material without germination gives the first shoots three and a half to four weeks after planting, but this is provided that the spring is warm and the soil is well warmed up. If the spring is protracted and cool, then the timing of the appearance of the first shoots is delayed up to thirty-five to forty days. And if you plant potatoes with sprouts, then in a warm spring you will see the first green sprouts in one and a half to two weeks, and in a cold spring in two to three weeks from the moment of planting. That is, the period for the appearance of the first leaves on potato tops is reduced by almost two to two and a half times.

Fourth, sprouting potatoes allows you to avoid contamination of the soil on your site with various diseases. Indeed, often on the outside, a healthy tuber can be rotten on the inside, and when it enters the soil, the disease will begin to actively develop, infecting the site and the future crop. Thus, when sprouting potatoes, you have time to observe the planting material and separate diseased tubers from healthy ones in time, and treat healthy ones with an antiseptic agent before planting.

In addition, pre-sprouted potatoes allows you to prevent tubers with weakened sprouts from entering the soil, since there will be little use from such seed material: it will take up space, it will need care and watering, and there will not be enough strength to produce a crop.

So we can conclude that it is necessary to germinate potatoes, as this helps to increase yields and will allow you to remove weak and diseased tubers at an early stage, without planting them in the soil.