Don't throw away your old potatoes. When the eyes start growing out, you can chop them in half or thirds and put them into a sack of soil to regrow. Here we used a large 20 pound cloth rice bag (bag only) filled with soil. We cut the potato in half, dug it into the middle of the soil, covered it with more soil, and left it in a sunny area outside and made sure to keep the soil moist. After six to eight weeks or when the sprouts are three to four inches tall, add more soil. After a few more weeks, keep checking your soil (poke around with your fingers) to see how your little potatoes are doing. When the leaves turn brown and start collapsing (some varieties bloom flowers), the potatoes are ready to pull out. :)
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Spring is upon us and the potatoes under the sink or in the pantry are sprouting. If used soon, they may still be edible, but if they have gone soft or have too many sprouts, why not plant them?
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I just found a bag of potatoes with sprouts as long as 10 inches; there is no smell to the bag. Can I plant them? And do I cut the potatoes in half with sprout attached or put the whole potato with sprouts in ground? I've never planted potatoes. Thanks for your help.
Hardiness Zone: 7b
By sally from Blue Jay, CA
We just plant them whole. My wife just planted some. We've had better success with sprouted potatoes than with seed potatoes, you just can't get the variety of types is the only drawback.
I'm in zone 7b, too, in Little Rock, and I plant a few potatoes each year for fun with my grandson. I read a book a few years ago by Ruth Stout called 'The No Work Garden'. I liked the sound of that! She noticed potatoes volunteering where she had thrown them out for garden compost, so she stopped digging into the ground to 'plant' them. She'd place the potato on fertile soil and cover it loosely with a few inches of hay. As they grow, add more hay. I've done this for several years now and still get a kick out of it. The bonus is that you can check for growth progress just by gently pulling back the hay, then recovering the potatoes when you're done.
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With grocery prices rising everyday, I try to find every possible way to save on our food budget. I had a few potatoes which were starting to sprout...
