Last years potatoes......

[smokeeater360]

Last summer I planted 5# worth of Yukon Gold potatoes. Last fall I harvested about 1 1/2 5 gallon buckets worth of potates. We have been using some of them for meals but I still have about 1/2 a bucket left, which I had stored in our cool basement in a dark room. Most of those have sprouted and have shoots on them that are a good foot long. My question is, can I use those for seed potoates this year and hopefully have a better harvest? The ones I have left range in size from the size of gumballs to about the size of a baseball.

[Gary350]

Your potatoes should make good seed potatoes as long as they are not shriveled up like a raisins to bad or rotted. My grandfather in Illinois kept his potatoes in the cellar all winter. May he used some of the potatoes for seed potatoes. When I lived in Illinois I used last years crop for seed potatoes too.

[rainbowgardener]

Use your biggest and best ones as seed potatoes and feed the gumball ones to the chickens

[applestar]

Yes, you can plant the ones that started growing in the pantry. Any of them that are marble to gumball size will have at least one eye and energy to grow. To make them easier to handle by planting time, it’s a good idea to separate them and trim them.

Ideally, keep the shoots trimmed to about 4-6 inches long. One way to do this if you have the room is to get boxes for cases of bottles from a liquor store and put the potatoes individually in each divided section. If you are going to close them up and stack them, cut/poke holes in the sides so they can breathe and not get moldy.

...I learned this nifty trick AFTER I tried planting potatoes that grew way too long in the pantry one year

Subject: Applestar's 2016 Garden

...
Now, we've talked about how you should really get certified seed potatoes to plant rather than using the grocery store potatoes.... So, I don't recommend doing what I'm doing, but when *someone* has shoved a bag of potatoes to the back of the pantry until THIS is going on by the time I discover them, what is a gardener to do? The extra long ones are actually tiniest tubers from last year's harvest that I meant to save more carefully for this year's seed.

...more in that thread if you want to see how I planted them and and how that turned out.

[Gary350]

If you plant a whole potato with sprouts it will make a nice plant but will seldom make potatoes. For some reason cuttings are the best way to grow potatoes. Let cutting dry for several days in the shade before planting. Potatoes planted in wet soil will rot. Cutting with 1 sprout makes larger potatoes. Cutting with 2 sprouts makes smaller potatoes but a larger quantity of potatoes. Each plant should produce about 2 to 3 lbs of potatoes.

[jal_ut]

"My question is, can I use those for seed potoates this year and hopefully have a better harvest?"

Yes. Can you plant them now? If so, go plant them. If not just knock off the sprouts and keep storing them as you have been. They will send out more shoots later.

I would prefer to plant them out in the garden plot, not in a container. When the plants get up well then you hill them up to prevent the tubers form seeing the sun. If the tubers see the sun they turn green and get a strong nasty flavor.