[whistler]

I have been given some rooster seed potatoes that don't look very big.
Does size really matter if your  potatoes are planted in  good soil?

[AndyRVTR]

I dont think the size of the parent seed has any bearing on the size of it's offspring... I may be wrong, but I would have thought the condition of the parent would be more important ie disease free...

[Trillium]

Not really. If I feel I have some that are too small, I simply plant 2 or 3 together in one hole.

[mumofstig]

They are supposed to be about the size of an egg...are yours smaller than that?

[Salmo]

The weight of potatoes per plant is roughly the same whatever the seed size. As a general rule small seed produces less potatoes but larger.

[Swing Swang]

The wisdom that was handed down to me was that big seeds tend to give lots of little 'uns because they produce more chits, whereas small seeds will produce fewer bigger ones although the overall yield will be similar. Have no idea if this is true though.

SS

[Swing Swang]

Salmo - looks like we posted at the same time - SS

[mumofstig]

what is the point of suppliers riddling the potatoes for size if it doesn't matter anyway 

[Kleftiwallah]

My old Dad(born 1901 ish).  .  .  used to cut his seed spuds up after chitting leaving one shoot per section, dipping the cut area in flowers of sulphur. We had luverly spuds.

If you want lots of small spuds, leave all sprouts on, if you want fewer but bigger spuds, rub off all but a couple of sprouts.   Cheers,   Tony.

[Trillium]

what is the point of suppliers riddling the potatoes for size if it doesn't matter anyway 

It would matter in the hole size of the planting machines on commercial levels.

[kevinp]

My old Dad(born 1901 ish).  .  .  used to cut his seed spuds up after chitting leaving one shoot per section, dipping the cut area in flowers of sulphur. We had luverly spuds.

If you want lots of small spuds, leave all sprouts on, if you want fewer but bigger spuds, rub off all but a couple of sprouts.   Cheers,   Tony.

This is what I was told to do as well to make them go further you just have to make sure each one has an eye. Like on this video

 wpWjwA2kAZw

[JayG]

The Lady Chrystl seed spuds I planted last year were considerably smaller than other varieties I have grown in the past but it didn't seem to make any difference to the results (they all had plenty of shoots on when chitted.)

I suppose smaller seeds could theoretically shrivel up more quickly than larger ones when chitting but I still had some spares left on my windowsill into July and even then they looked plantable! 

[azubah]

Years ago a friend gave us a sack of large potatoes which had started to sprout. 
We planted them whole and had a crop of the hugest potatoes we had ever seen...one was about 8" long.
It is now recommended to buy seed potatoes for planting and not use left over eating spuds.
I find that the tiniest seed potatoes do not seem to do much good.

So I think that potato size does make a difference.

[whistler]

Thank you all for your replies.

Yes, the seeds that I have are about egg size, so I will chit them and just leave on three "chits" as these are meant to be big pots for roasting?

Happy New Year to you all, and many thanks for all your support.

xx

[Vit]

Well, wouldn't create one more thread, so bump this up 
To cut or not to cut? That is the question.
IMO prefer to get smaller seed potatoes, than cut big ones.

C.O. remind you - 1kilo of small potatoes have  more seeds, than 1kilo of big potatoes