What is the best way to grow Potatoes?
Gatsby Seed Potatoes Organic
Price range: £6.95 through £57.00
🧪🥔 Our Potato Experiments
One of the questions we’re asked again and again is: “What’s the best way to grow potatoes?” We’re experimenting with the most common questions!
There are dozens of opinions, tips, traditions, and “guaranteed methods” floating around the gardening world. Some say chit them, some say don’t bother. Some say plant small tubers, others swear by cutting large tubers up.
So instead of arguing about it… we’re going to test some common questions out.
Nothing complicated. Just real growers, real gardens, and real results - please join us with your experimens and let us know how you get on.
To Chit or not to Chit, that is the question
Chitting is not as important later on in the spring, but we still think that it is worth it.
It’s one of the questions we get asked all the time — should you chit your potatoes or just plant them straight away? Some growers swear by giving them a head start, while others skip it entirely and still get great results. So this year, we’re putting it to the test to see what difference it actually makes. 🥔📊
It was a lovely spring day last weekend as we planted some unchitted Gatsby. Chitting becomes less important later in the spring as the ground warms up. However we still think that chitting for a few weeks will give you some benefit - but will they?! We also have others that ARE chitting away nicely on our kitchen windowsill to be planted in a few weeks.
The control experiment is CHITTED, PLANTED 3 to a bag.
We will also plant 2 to a bag and 4 to a bag
📏We’ll also see what happens with small vs large tubers
🐘👀 We will plant some tubers with scab - the elephant in the room.
We’ll share the experiments, the photos, and the results along the way. You can try them at home if you fancy it. Gardening should be fun, curious, and a little bit muddy.
We are using Gatsby for all our experiments, to eliminate one variable but you could do one experiment with one variety - eg chit half a net for a few weeks and plant the other half on arrival.
🌿☀️Have your own ideas? We’d love to hear them! Share your quirky potato experiments and you might see them tried in our garden too!
📊 A quick note on our experiments… These are small, real-life garden trials, not lab conditions, so of course they have their limitations. Soil, weather, and growing conditions all play a part, but that’s exactly what makes them useful. They reflect what actually happens in a normal garden, not just on paper. 🌱🥔
Chits Away!
The other tubers are chitting away. We have different sizes as well as some with a little bit of scab.
