10 pounds of potatoes for every 1 pound of seed is a good goal, but potato yields can vary greatly. Potatoes respond to the fertility and water they receive, and weather conditions and weed pressure. Our yields vary from year to year and within varieties in the same season.  

One-and-a-half-ounce to two-ounce seed piece size is the standard recommendation for most varieties. In general, smaller pieces will give fewer, larger potatoes and larger pieces will give more, smaller potatoes.  

For our 1 lb bags we try to use potatoes that are already the correct size and will not need to be cut. For the 3 lb to 10 lb bags there will also be smaller potatoes that will need probably not need to be cut or only cut in half. 

We are able to ship during the winter months, as long as the weather isn’t too cold. We then ship through early June. If you would like to plant a late summer or early fall crop, we recommend you receive your potatoes as late as we ship, and then store them in your refrigerator until you are ready to plant. During checkout there is an option to select your shipping date, we will ship as close to your selected date as possible. 

You will want to let the potatoes warm up before planting. When we ship your see, the potatoes are coming directly out of our cooler, once you receive them you will want them to warm up to the at least the temperature of the soil they are being planted in. Exposing them to light also sarts the growing process. After cutting, you should let the seed pieces heal over for 1 to 2 days, the cut area will form a skin.  

You can also green sprout or chit your potatoes, this is a more involved process that we have experimented with. I really like the idea of chitting, but because we are so busy shipping orders in the spring, we are not able to do it for our own potatoes. To chit your potatoes, expose them to light, but not direct sunlight, in preferably cool temperatures, as close to 50 to 55 degrees as possible, for 4 to 6 weeks. Chitting your seed potatoes should result in short, thick sprouts. Make sure not to allow your potatoes to freeze while they are chitting. 

Most varieties do well at 12 inch spacing. We plant Yukon Gold at 6 inches because it is susceptible to hollow heart and we don’t want it growing too big, too fast. Spacing has a similar impact as seed piece size, with wider spacing will result in larger potatoes and narrower spacing resulting in smaller potatoes. We plant as narrow as 6 inches and as wide as 15 inches. 

You can work backwards from the row feet you plan on planting to figure out how much seed you need to order. 

Take your row feet and divide by your spacing, then divide by 8 (assumes 2 ounce seed piece) 

At 12 inch spacing you will need 12.5 lbs for 100 row feet 

For grow bags or pots, you will want to plant 1 seed piece for every 2.5 to 3 gallons of soil.