h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When we've grown seed potatoes in the garden we've always carefully followed instructions and chitted and had good results. But sometimes we've ended up with 6 inch long shoots before we've got them planted and sometimes it's been little stubs and this year with our new allotment we've ended up just chucking them in to get them planted and hoping for the best. Is it one of these practices that everybody does just because everybody does it but we'd get decent yields of potatoes whatever?

MC

There was a trial on Gardeners world on chitting.
They did a selection of potaoes, first early, second early and main crop. Some they chitted, some they just planted straight into the ground.
The trial concluded that first early's grew better if chitted. The others showed no benefit at all from chitting.

That's really interesting to hear Venus. A lot of custom and practice goes on without any scientific input. For instance I always took as gospel the word of the older allotment holders, who had years of trial and error to go on. Sometimes I read 'how to' books and tried out the 'book' way. This usually led to a lot of muttering and head shaking and paternal amused looks.

I think the interest now shown in growing our own food again will encourage a lot more conversations like this.