[Judd]

I was looking at some Youtube videos re: planting potatoes. In the ones that I watched they all cut their pots so they had 2-3 shoots on each and then planted them.
Is this what you are supposed to do with them all or only large ones?

[DD.]

I don't do it with any.

It's a way of getting more out of one seed spud, but they're not that expensive and I don't think it's worth it and risk infection.

[Judd]

I wondered if they might get infected. I have plenty of seed pots soI think I'll just leave them whole.
Thanks DD.

[Swing Swang]

Apparently if you do this then you should leave the cut spuds chitting for a few days longer to scar over and reduce the risk of infection.

However my Dad's neighbour only ever plants Cara maincrop and cuts each an unchitted seed potato into as many pieces as there are 'eyes' as he works his way from planting station to planting station. He gets about 1.5acres from 0.5cwt of seed potatoes and germination is near 100%, but he is planting on dry, irrigated, quartz/laterite soil, in southern Europe. My guess is that the powdery/dry soil 'heals/seals' the cuts before the irrigation channels are filled with water and stops the spud rotting in the ground.

SS

[A Reyt Tayty]

Very few of the spuds I've chitted have more than 3 shoots on anyway.

[Trillium]

If we get really large seed spuds, we'll cut them, but mostly we try to avoid getting them or using them. Too much faffing about unless it was all the seed potatoes I had and I needed a huge crop (which I don't).

[Dopey113]

I know nothing, but I heard, if you do cut them, you have to put lime on the cut parts, and this will stop them rotting or becoming infected, and it has no outcome on the amount of spuds you have when you harvest,

[Dom2599]

The old fella on the plot next to me mentioned this way, i would have thought they may be open to infection so never bothered

[Trillium]

The cut potatoes do need to have the cut side sprinkled with lime (to stop rotting) and left to dry for 2 days. I personally can't be bothered with the delay, etc.

I've also noticed that it's mostly the old timers that bother to cut spuds, very likely from a time when seed spuds were hard to get and there were a lot of mouths to feed when food and money were short. Wartime and post-war gardeners find this a hard habit to break.