I get a lot of questions here at Learn How To Garden from subscribers and viewers. I had an interesting one recently from Claire that’s very timely

“I keep reading about chitting potatoes, what does it mean and how would I chit potatoes”

Quit simply chitting is the process whereby we get the seed potato tubers to produce shoots before planting then into the ground or container.

This means the potatoes have “eyes’ small, nodes on them  where the new shoots emerge and this happens quite naturally as the temperature rises in Spring .

The interesting thing is that this process is recommended in most books but has been shown in fact to have very little, if any, affect on the earliness or weight of the potato harvest

The one exception to this is with First early salad potatoes  normally referred to as ‘New Potatoes’ as these are harvested as soon as they are of a viable size to eat and as we want them as early in the Summer as possible, letting the seed potatoes develop some shoots then planting into a bag or raised bed with warmer compost, can bring this forward so we can crop them in as little as 70 days from planting.

Conversely main crop and late main crop potatoes can take up to 140 days to mature and they are allowed to grow as large as possible and are left in the ground until the foliage wilts.  In their case there is little point in chitting as its makes no difference to yields.

To chit your seed potatoes, simply place your potatoes into a open egg box and keep them in a cool light room from February, planting out when the soil is warmer.   Remember that any foliage that is produced is susceptible to late frost and this would cause more setbacks than starting later and this is why I grow all my early potatoes in either bags or containers  as it allows me to keep them in a frost free cool greenhouse if frost is predicted.

Heres how  to grow potatoes in a bag