Transplanting potatoes

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by urbanus, Oct 13, 2009.

  1. urbanus

    urbanus Junior Member

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    We have heaps of volunteer spud plants sprouting from potato peels that did not get sufficiently composted before being dug in around a couple of fruit trees. Unless these are organic kipflers, which were purchased at the market, and I suspect they are not as the skin looks like desiree then so much for the urban myth about supermarket potatoes not sprouting. The plants are healthy 20cm tall; my question is can they be transplanted into the vegie patch without greening issues?
     
  2. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    Re: Transplanting potatoes

    g'day urbanus,

    i'd be tempted to leave them where they are, spuds are soil improvers as well, and not a myth about spuds from shops not sprouting it may depend on what store you sourced them from as all 'taters may not be treated, but generally the ones in larger s/markets are. we often have shop bough spuds (we never buy from the big stores) bud in the pantry the litmus test, so at the righ time of the year we plant those.

    len
     
  3. milifestyle

    milifestyle New Member

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    Re: Transplanting potatoes

    boil your potato skins before composting or feeding to chooks. it will stop unwanted germenation and or germenation contaminating specific potato beds.

    soaking them in a bucket of water can wok too. soak to fermentation point.
     
  4. urbanus

    urbanus Junior Member

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    Re: Transplanting potatoes

    thanks for the tips. Would it change the advice about leaving them in place if the trees were citrus??
     
  5. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    Re: Transplanting potatoes

    gave that some thought and figured you ahd already dug around that area and would assume the trees have not been harmed in anyway, so along those lines the benefits from a crop of spuds might be long lasting. you could have an each way bet maybe transplant them from around one tree then you can compare later on. curently for me it is getting into the wrong part of the season for a hugely successfull potato planting (talking from sub-tropics) so it may not be a huge harvest to worry about?

    len
     
  6. urbanus

    urbanus Junior Member

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    Re: Transplanting potatoes

    After much consideration, decided to lift and transplant the young spud plants as the citrus have only been in for one season. A week or so on and most are doing well in one of the garden beds. Surprisingly a couple of the more developed plants had some small spuds on them. From appearance it looks like desiree and nicola so bring on the new season!
     
  7. ho-hum

    ho-hum New Member

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    Re: Transplanting potatoes

    Urbanus,

    If your compost didnt break down properly it will be pulling nitrogen out of the soil which will set your citrus back faster than potato plants.

    You may want to topdress it with some animal manure. If you buy dynamic lifter be a little heavy handed as citrus do get very hungry at this time of year.

    cheers,

    ho-hum
     
  8. urbanus

    urbanus Junior Member

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    Re: Transplanting potatoes

    My thinking exactly hence why pulled them up before they grew too big. Most were only a couple of centimetres tall with three or four leaves. Have given the citrus a feed and will apply mulch on the weekend. The thing for me was I never really noticed the peelings when digging in the compost so will be more careful next time. It was just luck that I had a spare bed for them following a green manure at the time. Still it's reassuring to know that not all spuds have been treated not to sprout.
     
  9. pmorrison2588

    pmorrison2588 Junior Member

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    Re: Transplanting potatoes

    I would say that you are actually lucky to get some healthy potato sprouts in a quick time, and believe me, growing potato plants out of carefully planted peels is also not that easy. It needs a lot of cultured soils, and attention. thus please keep those plants if possible, and try to shift them to a new prepared bed of semi dry soil, that will help them grow more fast.
     

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