Sunday 25 January 2009

odd potato out

http://www.alexareynolds.com/garden09/potatoshrivel.JPGI have another garden mystery. What you see here is a potato I cut in half and put in the bottom of this big pot with some potting soil. It looks like I got two sprouts from one half (on the left) and one from the other. As they grew up I kept burying them with layers of manure, sugar cane mulch and compost from my heap.

They even took the hot weather quite well and bounced back when it cooled down in the last few days. But since then the sprout on the left has started to wilt from the bottom leaves upward. Now the whole thing has almost wasted away ... but the other two seem fine! I don't know what's going on.

I dug down next to it almost to the bottom and didn't see anything unusual - the soil is moist but not soggy, the stem looks healthy though I didn't see any side roots. I wonder what's going on and if I'm going to lose all of them.

3 comments:

Mrs. Phillips said...

wow.

Michelle said...

How neat--I didn't realize you could plant them that way. How often do yoiu need to cover more soil over the sprouts? Do they need a lot of sun?

Alexa said...

It's pretty easy so far. You have to start with a pretty big pot and yes, they do love sun. The taller the pot the better. First you bury a few potatoes in potting soil about a foot deep at the bottom - you might want to mix the soil with some sand though for good drainage. It took about 2 weeks for them to sprout but they grow pretty quickly. Every week or two they've grown enough to put more manure, compost, or straw until you just see the tops. Then repeat until they're at the top!

You're meant to buy a proper "seed" potato, but really you just need to leave a potato in a bright spot until it starts to sprout, then cut it up, each eye will make a new plant.