Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: FRUITFULLS SIS on March 24, 2009, 11:27
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:blink: Please Please don't laugh today is the first day in my life I have planted a potatoe ::) I have just gone out to my garden looked at the soil then at the potato and don't know what way up to plant it sprouts up or down!! :unsure: :wub: HELP :ohmy:
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Ermmm i panted mine with sprouts up hope i was right my first was on Sunday hahahah :blush:
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Sprouts up is correct :lol: :lol:
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Sprouts up is correct :lol: :lol:
Thankyou :D Got my answer on my way out to the garden again :)
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so glad you posted that question, i was too embarrassed to ask :lol:
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Watch video
http://www.gardeners-world.net/videotest.asp?videoID=59 (http://www.gardeners-world.net/videotest.asp?videoID=59)
These sorts of questions are often answered here on the forum home page
Grow Your Own
All about growing your own vegetables, fruit and herbs whether in your garden or allotment plot.
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Hope it helps
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Will try to plant mine this weekend, but the chitting is sooooo slow, some of them are only about 1/2 cm. Will that be OK ? Mrs Bouquet
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You can even plant them without any chits, but as it's turned colder again :( - it might be worth leaving them to chit in the warm for another week or so :)
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so glad you posted that question, i was too embarrassed to ask :lol:
I must admit I did feel a bit of a twit :wacko: but I was desperate :D
Good Luck with yours ::)
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Potato chitts are leaf shoots rather than root shoots so YES they go UP :D
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I asked the same question a while ago! I felt stoopid too ::)
If you dont know though, you don't know, even if to some its obvious!!! :lol:
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I didn't know but had guessed that they were leaf shoots - because if you forget a potato at the back of the cupboard you end up with masses of shoots growing upwards rather than downwards. I'm puzzled, though, because (as far as I remember - I could be completely wrong) don't seeds generally produce a root first, before the shoot that will eventually grow leaves?
Anyone know whether I'm right, and if so, why potatoes are different?
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because seed potatoes are not "seeds"
They are root tubers which are dug up from last years plants and planted to grow again.
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I know they're not the same thing, but as potato plants still need roots for moisture and nutrients and leaves for photosynthesis, I'm curious about why they develop in the opposite order. Is it because tubers contain more moisture than seeds and therefore don't need to start drinking as soon? Or because they're naturally going to be further under the earth than most seeds it will take longer to produce leaves than roots?
Or am I just getting curious about something unimportant? Wouldn't be the first time, certainly - I always want to know why things happen. I must have driven my parents mad when I was two!
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I think you must be right about the water content of the potato giving it time to get it's leaves into the light to start photosynthesizing before it needs to bother with roots to take up water.
When a seed germinates the radicle (root) is always produced first. There is almost no water in a seed so it would not be able to produc any growth without getting water on board first.
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That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!
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i may be the younger sis but i new which way up to plant my tats.Only coz iv read sooo much on here though :D Sorry to keep laughing sis but so glad you have joined the forum and growing veg too :D
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How do farmers manage then? Because I'm sure they dont plant potatoes singly in nice neat rows with upward facing chits like we do!
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If you leave potatoes in the back of the cupboard long enough you get roots as well, coming out in the little cluster just underneath where the juicy chit shoots grow
(The voice of experience) :blink: :blink:
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I was too embarrassed to ask too...
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there is no real need to get the chits pointing the right way up unless they are overly long.... nature has a strange way of knowing which way is up ;)
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Farmers planting machines just drop them in any way up. It does not matter but if the chit is at the top it will not have to grow right round the seed to get to the soil surface.
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I must admit my earlies go in chits up and so do the 2nd earlies, but by the time it comes to main crop I just drop them in the hole :blush: not got time to be posh with them :lol:
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:blink: Please Please don't laugh today is the first day in my life I have planted a potatoe ::) I have just gone out to my garden looked at the soil then at the potato and don't know what way up to plant it sprouts up or down!! :unsure: :wub: HELP :ohmy:
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Definitely sprouts up or as my grandfather taught me - if you plant them sprouts down, they come up in Australia and they get all the potatoes.
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I'll lock this thread now, it's from 2009 and I think it has been resurrected by mistake :unsure: