Organic seed potatoes

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Jordana
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Looking to grow organic seed potatoes this year. Anyone know where I can purchase these? I’d like to grow kennebec, chiefton and Yukon gold.

I also have these potatoes from last year which sprouted like crazy and are now tangled. Are they worth planting? Some are a bit soft but not rotten.
jack oostenbrink
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On the topic of soft sprouted potatoes for planting out, go for it, you will have good success with that. If you had any disease issues such as scab on those potatoes, the problem will emerge again this year. If you had nice potatoes last year, I would not worry about replanting.

One tip for purchasing organic seed potatoes for a good price would be to purchase table grade spuds from an organic market gardener and use them for seed. Commercial non organic potatoes that you buy from the super market don't work for this because they have been treated to prevent potatoes from sprouting (I think they use UV light).
PeasIntheRain
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jack oostenbrink wrote: Wed 23-Mar-2022, 09:39 Commercial non organic potatoes that you buy from the super market don't work for this because they have been treated to prevent potatoes from sprouting (I think they use UV light).
Just a note on this point: application of a compound used to be most common way to prevent sprouting; I'm not aware of an overarching change in practice in North America. More info here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711416/
and a university extension article here: https://www.extension.uidaho.edu/publis ... IS1120.pdf
There is also a very complicated relationship between ethylene gas naturally produced by apples and potato sprouting/not sprouting by varietal of potato and the time that the apple is introduced... but it's worth a shot to keep an apple with your bag of potatoes when storing.

For those that are untreated with CIPC, I agree with Jack that wrinkled old potatoes always grow well. The question for me was the health of ones with a very long sprout, somewhat fragile or complicated when planting. I'm going to be trying to plant potatoes with very long sprouts this year because the warm winter messed up my storage! :) If the potato is still large and somewhat firm, I will break off the long sprout and let it grow from another eye. However, I'll be trying some just tossed in as is, burying most of the sprout. We shall see...
Jordana
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Good to know. I will give my old potatoes a try and also source out some new ones via a local grower. Dan do you have any available at local harvest? Chieftain, kennebec and Yukon good are the varieties I wanted to try this year…
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