[AlotArds]

I was in the garage and found the last of the potatoes from last year, they are a reasonable size and was wondering if I could use them as seed potatoes for this year, I had no problems with blight last year.

[gavinjconway]

.... and what other viruses other than blight did you not see on your crop that you might be hibernating in your garage saved spuds?  For the price of a bag or two of specially grown seed potatoes why not eat what you have left because thats why you grew them in the first place. 

There are loads of same questions on the forum posts. Do a search and you will find all the answers.

[DD.]

This is an old post from our resident seed spud supplier, which I think double underlines it, with a full stop at the end.

I had a man from up the road a bit who sent me some very rare tubers that he had been growing for 3 years himself. The potatoes looked healty and I popped them in some containers to grow them in. Once the shaws got to about a foot high you could see they were infected with severe mosaic and I had to dispose of the lot of them. I called the guy and he said he never saw anything wrong with them last year. And so ends my story.

Fortunately Iain had the foresight to pot grow them, so his ground was not infected. Others may not have such insight into spud growing.

[Salmo]

You can probably get away with saving your own seed for one year but even then you do increase the risk of disease such as black leg, especially after a wet year.

Common practice in farming was to grow 'once grown' seed to save a bit of money. Buy certified seed one year, save some of the small tubers to plant part of the crop the next. 

[JayG]

Potatoes are subject to so many potential diseases, few of which are trivial, that it makes sense to me to only plant certified seed potatoes, even though there is no guarantee that they will be 100% free from any of them.

Growing perfect spuds requires a certain amount of luck as well as technique, so it helps if you start by playing with the best hand of cards you can deal yourself. 

[AlotArds]

Thanks for the replies, DD you have given me an idea, might try a few of them in grow bags. I don't put the grow bags near my raised beds.  I'll get fresh seed spuds for the bed.

[NewSteve]

What do the seed suppliers do to keep their stock disease free?

Or in other words, suppose I really wanted to grow my own supply of seed potatoes. Are we talking hydroponics? Sterilised compost?

I'm not actually planning to try it btw - at least not this year!

[JayG]

To get the certification they have to be grown in conditions likely to minimise possible infection, and for known levels of certain specified diseases to be below certain thresholds, which are not always zero.

Many are grown in Scotland because aphid populations tend to be lower, and aphids are responsible for transmitting several diseases between plants (not just spuds!)

Certification is not a guarantee that the seed spuds are completely free from all potential diseases, but it's a lot less risky than planting your own saved or supermarket spuds.

[mumofstig]

They are grown in areas with low pest levels, as aphids spread various viruses - and the crops are subject to many Defra tests/checks during the growing season.


Snappish Jay

[NewSteve]

Right, so those big sheds in the North West of Scotland were probably growing spuds!