For several years in a row I looked at bags of potato seeds on the shelves. A fairly large selection is offered. And she was thinking - why do I need potato seeds? Perhaps this is such a hassle - to grow good potatoes from seeds? After all, in the first year you do not get tubers for food. Now it’s easy enough to buy seed potatoes. Alternatively, you can leave the seed tubers from your crop. Germinated - planted and that's it.
I know well from my experience that if you plant the same varieties of potatoes grown on your site every year, then the seed material accumulates diseases. These can be viral diseases that are not treated at all. Fungal, bacterial is also very difficult to treat, and measures for their prevention are quite complex and labor-intensive. Even if seed potatoes are pickled, processed before planting, then bacteria and fungal spores overwinter well in the soil, so sooner or later potatoes can be infected with various diseases at any stage of cultivation.
In addition, potato varieties have the ability to degenerate, lose their varietal characteristics, no matter how well we take care of it, fertilize it, protect it from the Colorado potato beetle. Productivity is also gradually decreasing.
Potato growers recommend updating potatoes at least once in 5-7 years. I read these tips, I agree with this. Therefore, every 3-4 years I bought seed potatoes in specialized stores. Usually bought 2-3 grades. One proven variety that has been successfully grown on its site, which I really like to taste. In recent years, this is Adretta. Be sure to plant 1-2 new varieties to find out which variety will grow best on my land. So "figured out" another very tasty potato variety for me - Picasso.
I don’t buy potatoes for planting on the market, as this is just a different variety from a different garden or field. It was also grown for several years without updating - no one can guarantee that it will grow healthy and tasty with me.
Refreshing potatoes, growing them healthy, without disease, will help them grow from seeds. The seeds from the bags that we see in stores are called botanical. And I looked, looked at them - could not stand it - bought, sowed ... Now I will share my experience with you.
Potato seeds
What is the fundamental difference between potato seeds and removable potatoes? And such that when grown from seeds, it does not accumulate disease. We get healthy planting material.
Potatoes belong to nightshade crops, as well as tomatoes, eggplant, peppers.
Potato seeds are very small, so it seems that they are very few. Shoots are also small. Therefore, there are some differences from growing from seeds, for example, tomatoes.
As you can see in the picture, potato seeds are sown superficially, they are not covered with soil from above. Sprouts are very weak and they may simply not break through the soil layer. This must be taken into account when sowing.
Potato seedlings growing soil
The soil structure for sowing potato seeds should be very small, loose. This also requires weak sprouts.
I usually buy ready-made soil. I see that it is with perlite, which is a good baking powder and a good accumulator of moisture. Such soil acquires the property of not caking, which is so important for small potato seeds.
Germination capacity, choose a small, shallow. For these purposes, I usually use plastic salad jars with a transparent lid. They will be needed only until the stage of dive seedlings. I use two plastic molds. In one, I make drainage holes. I insert it into the whole form.
Seed treatment before sowing
Potato seedlings are often affected by such a fungal disease as the "black leg". Therefore, before sowing the seeds must be decontaminated. I advise you to do this with a solution of Fitosporin, prepared according to the instructions. But there are other protectants on sale - the choice is yours.
I spread the seeds on a rag, pour the disinfectant solution, leave for 30-35 minutes. A cloth is preferable to gauze or bandage. The seeds are small - they can get tangled in large cells of gauze.
By the way, I also recommend etching or calcining in the microwave. You can shed it with a solution of Fitosporin. And I put the container with soil in the microwave for 7-10 minutes. The soil is usually moist and even steam comes from it when warming. It is steam that serves as a sterilizer.
If you have chosen to disinfect the soil with Fitosporin, spill it well so that excess moisture escapes through the drainage holes. Why do we need such abundant watering before sowing?
Seeds, as I said above, are laid out on top of the ground. If you then water them from above, then seeds spread out at regular intervals can be washed off in a pile - it will be more difficult to dive such plants. Weak, fragile roots intertwine, it will be difficult for you to remove them from the soil without damaging them.
Another reason - watering the seeds from above can deepen them - they may not hatch, not rise.
By the way, on garden forums I often read reviews that the seeds, they say, got low-quality, they do not germinate. Of course, this may be so. But another reason - because they do not emerge because they are buried or planted in too dense soil. I got almost everything - 18 out of 20. By the way, they say that the older the seeds, the better they germinate.
Seed and sprout care
After sowing, do not forget to close the mold on top of the lid. If they had a form without a lid, an ordinary food wrap would do, which would retain a certain moisture content, so necessary for hatching seeds. Condensation on the lid or film will tell you about suitable humidity. In its absence, the seeds can dry out, not sprout.
And one more warning. Do not put a jar of seeds on the windowsill. It can be very cold there. Low temperature is one reason that seeds may not germinate. They are more likely to rot in cold, moist soil. One of the tips is to keep the potato seed pot in a warm place with temperatures up to 25 ° C until germination. You can even put it on the battery, spreading several layers of newspaper or plywood under a jar. Ventilate the seeds daily until wedging.
As soon as the seeds hatch, open the lid of the container and place it in a bright, warm place.
When your seedlings reach a height of 2-3 cm, they are ready to dive. It is not worth replanting the seedlings immediately in a large container, because the soil, not developed by the roots, soups. In general, before the final planting in the ground, it is necessary to dive, transship seedlings more than once - this is a feature of growing potatoes from seeds.
Features of the picking of potato seedlings
What containers are suitable for the first pick? I believe that at this stage, special plastic cassettes with cells for growing seedlings are sufficient. The cells are small, but the seedlings are also not yet large. It will be convenient to extract seedlings from them along with a lump of land for transplanting into a large container.
The first pick should be carried out very carefully - seedlings are very fragile. No root compression - a small deepening of the seedlings can be done by watering the Fitosporin solution. When watering, the seedlings themselves will fall a little lower. Any inadvertent damage to fragile roots can cause them to rot.
The most common mistake is spraying hatching seeds with small sprouts from a hand sprayer. There should not be any excess moisture on the sprouts - it can lead to the disease of the black leg. The soil should be moist but moderate. Watering should be along the edge of the tank so that the Fitosporin solution or water does not fall on the sprouts.
Growing Stages
As you already understood, growing potatoes from seeds is growing through seedlings.
The first stage is sowing.
The second is picking into small cells of a plastic cassette.
The third is transshipment into a large capacity - I use large half-liter plastic glasses.
And then everything is like with any seedlings - I transplant it into the ground around the second half of April, when the danger of frost is over.
But do not forget, I live in the Krasnodar Territory, and you look at the climate of my region. In the middle lane, this should probably be done in the middle or even in the second half of May.
I focus on the shoots of potatoes planted with seed tubers. As soon as ordinary potatoes emerge - it's time to plant potato seedlings.
How to calculate the timing of sowing potato seeds for seedlings
The first seedlings usually appear after 3-4 days, and by the end of the week almost all seeds have sprouted. But I read in various forums that seedlings can appear in 10-12 days. It took me 2 months from seedlings to planting seedlings in open ground - it is much longer than when growing tomato seedlings.
That is, if you plant potato seedlings in mid-May (tentatively May 15), then seedlings should appear in mid-March (March 15). And the seeds should be sown in early March - March 1-5.
Planting seedlings in the ground, care features
I'll run a little ahead. Bushes from seeds I have grown so different in volume, number of stems, height. Selecting then those that I will plant next year, I felt like a breeder - it is at this stage that it is decided which ones to reject, which ones to leave. Nodules grow small, but still among them there are larger or smaller ones, there are even ones - there are clumsy ones, there are clean ones - there are strange spots.
In general, this is an amazing process. From such a small seed, almost full-grown bushes grow.
When planting seedlings in the ground, I deepened it a bit - I left only the leaves on top.
The first time, planting seedlings of potatoes in the soil, did not take into account that her root system is much weaker than that of tomatoes, for example. Therefore, in the dense soil of potato seedlings, it was difficult to grow. I think that next year sand or sawdust should be added to the grooves when planting seedlings.
A distinctive feature - bushes grown from seedlings are longer green. Maybe this is because I watered them, and the main potato grows on my non-irrigated lands. And maybe it should be so.
And further. Of course, as with the main potato, the main problem for me is the Colorado potato beetle. He ate the leaves of this potato especially willingly. I had to process it not 2-3 times, but 5 or 6 times - I lost count.
Not so long ago I read that if you leave a distance of 40-50 cm between plants and between rows of 60-70 cm when planting seedlings, you can get marketable potatoes from it.
But I did not know this, so I planted seedlings close to each other - left between them 20-30 cm, and arranged the rows too close to each other - no more than 30 cm. The crop was small, but I counted on it. Since I planted seedlings very close to each other, it is very difficult for me to say how many tubers a plant gave. In general, it seemed to me that they were completely lying underground.
What else to say? Of course, there was a lot of trouble. Spring and early summer were rainy and cold. There were no frosts, but I still covered the bed with spanbond potatoes - from the wind, from the rain too. Spanbond lets the rain through, but it nevertheless disperses the raindrops, protects it from large drops with the wind. Very fragile seedlings were planted.
In May-early June there was enough moisture in the soil, it rained regularly, so I did not water the seedlings. She only fed, as regulars of gardening forums advised - with organic matter - did not water it, but sprayed it with home-made green fertilizer from grass and weeds. Here in this article - "Fertilizing Tomatoes in the Open Field and the Greenhouse" - described in detail how I do it.
And then the seedlings grew. I was even surprised at the size of the potato bushes - well, maybe a little smaller than ordinary bushes.
Dug it in early August - when the tops just started to turn yellow. The main potato crop a month before had already been harvested.
Harvest
Now I will talk about the size of the dug up tubers. Of course they were small. Not peas, but their diameter did not exceed 3-4 cm, like a quail egg. True, a few pieces were slightly smaller than average size, but it was on those bushes that grew from the edge. I think they had more room for growth.
The total amount obtained from the seeds of tubers also surprised me. Before that I read that you can get 20-30 mini-tubers from one seed for the further cultivation of a full-fledged crop. But, alas, I can’t boast of such a crop.
There were 20 seeds in a bag. 18 seedlings grew, which were planted in the ground. All have taken and grown. The total number of tubers received is just over 120 pieces. I think that our heavy black soil played an important role here, which is too dense even for ordinary seed tubers. But to be honest, I'm happy with the result.
My mini-tubers are being planted green now. They are advised to store them later, like ordinary seed potatoes, in the cellar.
Now the most important thing is to keep them until spring.
So let's wait ... Then I will share with you the experience of obtaining a full crop of small potato nodules grown from seeds.