long sprouts

[svalli]

My dad had planted some potatoes last week and he had planted them so that the long sprouts are sticking up from the ground. It looks a bit strange because the sprouts are white and about a foot tall. Now I started to wonder, if it would have been better for him to bury the long sprouts in the ground. If the potatoes form on the underground stems, would the long sprouts grow more potatoes, if they were under the soil?

[feldon30]

They should be buried as deep as possible. Sprouts should not be "1 foot tall" out of the ground.

[Tom Wagner]

Since Svalli is in Finland, I had to look at the current weather there. I know she is north of Helsinki, but it gives me an idea of the temps.




Helsinki Weather


· Tonight; Some clouds. Low 54F. WNW winds shifting to NE at 10 to 15 mph.
· Tomorrow: Partly cloudy skies in the morning will give way to cloudy skies during the afternoon. High 63F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph.

My dad had planted some potatoes last week and he had planted them so that the long sprouts are sticking up from the ground. It looks a bit strange because the sprouts are white and about a foot tall. Now I started to wonder, if it would have been better for him to bury the long sprouts in the ground. If the potatoes form on the underground stems, would the long sprouts grow more potatoes, if they were under the soil?

There are some keywords that I could explain more on the long sprouts and they include:

• physiological age
• rusticity
• dormancy
• incubation
• temperature
• emergence
• yield

I went to the search engines to find relevant opinions and found quite a few, and here are a few:


When planting, you may want to remove all but a few sprouts if there are very many. Try to plant before the sprouts get too long, but if they do, lay them horizontally in your trench when planting, being careful not to break them off. For more on this go to….
http://vric.ucdavis.edu/veginfo/commodity/potato/organic_potatoes.pdf


To sprout seed potatoes two to three weeks before planting, spread them out in a single layer on an enclosed porch or in a warm room where they'll get some sun and where the temperature will stay near 60° F or warmer. The potatoes will develop short green sprouts, rather than the long white sprouts they produce in the dark. Hat tip to; http://www.garden.org/foodguide/brow...s_planting/566

If stored in a warm dark place, the potatoes will make long pale shoots that will weaken the plant.

Care must be taken to ensure that warmed tubers can be planted immediately, re-cooled or exposed to light, when sprouting has just begun. This is important to prevent excessive sprout lengthening. Long sprouts damaged or removed at planting may result in loss of plant vigour. http://www.gnb.ca/0029/00290002-e.asp


Physiological age of seed potatoes strongly affects emergence, number of stems per plant, number of tubers per stem, tuber-size distribution and tuber yield of the progeny crop. The physiological age needs to be optimized to produce a canopy and a tuber system that allow tuber production for specific outlets. http://www.njf.nu/filebank/files/200...F6ltgoCaZp.pdf


This is not totally relevant but making a potato bonsai using long sprouted tubers might be fun. Check it out below....



Plant the potato in the pot so it juts out of the dirt. Your potato should be at least half way in the dirt. Before planting your spud spend some time observing how the sprouts grow out of the potato. The sprouts become the branches so you'll want to plant the tuber with these sprouts above the dirt. How you position the potato in the dirt has everything to do with the form that your bonsai will take after planting. Because every sprouted potato is different, every bonsai potato will be different. I like to imagine the potato is a rock and the sprouts are small trees growing from the rock. http://www.greatscott.com/potato/


I have planted potatoes with the sprouts sticking out anywhere from just showing to over a foot out!!! They do look odd.



Naturally in my area of the PNW, the temps and lack of harsh sun is like Finland. I can grow potatoes with the sprouts sticking out. Super sunny areas with excessive heat would likely "burn" the white sprouts, causing die back. I have found that new sprouts coming out of the ground outperform yield wise the adjacent stem that was exposed originally.

I have planted potatoes with long sprouts exceeding 3 ft. in length. But I am more successful if I layer them in the soil first. Planting long sprouted potatoes hastens maturity and I do this when I plant in July here. I try to allow the tip of the sprout to be just at the surface level.

I put out sacks of potatoes in the sunlight with shade cloth over them a few weeks ago. The tender white sprouts would sun green, die back a bit, but the basal part would regrow a vigorous green pip of a sprout, perfect for planting. Removing the sprout is OK if there is enough turgidness left in the tuber. If the tuber is very flacid, I leave the sprout on.

Maybe I will take some photos of my planting of long sprouted potatoes and demonstrate that it can be done, but with variable results as some varieties can take this abuse and others not so well.

Tom