The yield of a crop such as potatoes decreases over time, and the quality of the vegetable becomes not the best due to depletion of the soil. Therefore, the same seed potatoes used for planting lose their taste without renewal. To achieve high yield of vegetables, it is necessary to change planting material, observing the rules of crop rotation and agricultural technology.
How to grow potatoes from seeds?
Growing from seeds helps produce elite potatoes that can produce healthy tubers for several years.
Grow potatoes both seedling and non-seedling methods.
Planting seeds for seedlings: terms and rules
For seedlings, seeds are placed in containers in the spring, at the end of March or beginning of April. Containers for potatoes are chosen to be ten centimeters high. They are filled with pre-disinfected soil made up of humus, garden soil, sand and humus. The distance between potato seeds should be at least five centimeters, and they are planted to a depth of one to one and a half centimeters.
Before sowing, vegetable seeds need to awaken. To do this, they are warmed up by placing them in a humid chamber with a temperature of 40 degrees for fifteen to twenty minutes. Then the seed material is dried to a flowable state. To increase the germination of seeds, they are germinated in a damp napkin or toilet paper.
For seedlings you need a warm place with good lighting. You can speed up seed germination by covering the containers with plastic wrap to create a greenhouse effect.
Water the emerging seedlings sparingly, as vegetable seedlings are prone to rotting. In addition, due to the fragility of the sprouts, it is better to spray the soil with liquid from a spray bottle.
When growing potatoes in seedlings, do not forget about proper care of the seedlings:
- For watering, use water at room temperature, trying to prevent moisture from getting on the leaves.
- They feed the potatoes with urea, taking ten grams of fertilizer per ten liters of water.
- Regularly loosen the soil after watering.
- When plantings are dense, weak and diseased seedlings are removed.
Potato seedlings should be transplanted into open ground in mid-May.During the procedure, care is taken not to damage the resulting seedlings, otherwise the seedlings will die.
Seedless sowing of potatoes
Planting potatoes seeds and immediately onto a pre-prepared bed. They begin planting seeds in early or mid-May, when the threat of night frosts has passed and the soil has warmed up to plus fourteen degrees. The bed is dug up in advance, and then the soil is harrowed. Rows and holes for sowing are marked, determining a distance of fifty to sixty centimeters.
Instead of holes, furrows four to five centimeters deep are used for sowing potatoes. Before planting, the garden bed is watered and the seeds are placed in damp soil. Then lay a 1 centimeter thick layer of mulch on top.
You can cover the beds with covering material so that the seeds are not affected by low temperatures. After emergence, five to ten days later, care for the vegetable plant is carried out as usual. In case of very dense plantings, seedlings are thinned out when they have two true leaves.
Growing potatoes from seeds is successful if the agricultural techniques for cultivating the vegetable plant are followed. Then in the fall they receive tubers, which will help renew the planting material for several years.
Advantages and disadvantages of the procedure
Even experienced vegetable growers are not always aware of how to obtain a high-quality potato product. Some people change potato varieties by buying ready-made tubers in a store or market. But this does not always help to renew the potatoes in the garden. After all, tubers can rot or carry pathogens. But you can actually get elite potato varieties from seeds at home.
The advantages of this method are that the grown potatoes:
- will not hurt;
- improve your taste;
- will give high yields in unstable climatic conditions;
- will have strong immunity to many vegetable diseases.
Another point in favor of growing from seeds. Tubers for planting are expensive, and the cost of elite potato seeds is much lower.
The only drawback of this method of obtaining high-quality tubers is the labor intensity of the growing method. In order for vegetable seedlings to survive, planting and caring for them must be competent.
How to collect potato seeds?
Potato seeds are purchased in specialized stores. But you can also get seeds yourself that will give a high-quality harvest of tubers. And you won’t have to think about how to renew your vegetable plantings in your garden.
The photo shows that potato seeds are found in green berries that form on the stems of the plant. Usually these are unripe fruits, and the seeds in them are not yet ready for planting. To make them suitable for sowing, they are collected when the berries have been lying indoors for some time, preferably hanging in gauze bags. They need warmth and light to ripen quickly.
When the green fruits become soft, the seeds are squeezed out of the berries. They are washed under running water and laid out to dry. Store seeds until spring in paper bags. The germination rate of seed material collected from potatoes is low. You should prepare more of it than is necessary for planting. The seeds retain their quality for two years.
Caring for potato seedlings
Seed potatoes require certain growing conditions. For active growth, it needs loamy and sandy loam soils, provided with a sufficient amount of useful elements.
Before planting the seedlings, two hundred grams of humus is added to each hole.Both superphosphate (ten grams per hole) and potassium salt (five grams). The ingredients are thoroughly mixed with damp soil.
It is recommended to place two vegetable seedlings in one hole. After watering, the rows of young seedlings are harrowed to rid the potatoes of weeds.
The description of caring for a vegetable plant includes the following procedures:
- watering along the furrows once or twice a season during dry summers, when tuberization begins;
- fertilizing with wood ash, mineral fertilizers, mullein;
- hilling, as a result of which additional underground stems are formed;
- loosening row spacing to a depth of five to seven centimeters.
One of the important techniques for increasing potato yields is hilling. It is carried out only when the soil is moistened. In dry soil, underground stems, stolons, will not form. The first time the seed potatoes are hilled is eight to ten centimeters, when the plant stem reaches a height of twenty centimeters, then before flowering.
When there is a strong development of the tops of a vegetable and the appearance of weak ovaries, it is impossible to do without introducing wood ash and phosphorus-potassium fertilizers in liquid form into the rows. For the procedure, thirty grams of superphosphate and fifteen grams of potassium salt are dissolved in a bucket of water.
Potatoes grown from seeds produce strong tubers. In the first year there will be only a few of them, and in terms of weight they will not please you with their size. But in the future, these nodules will become the basis for high yields of elite varieties.
Reviews about the method of growing tubers from seeds are only positive. The only difficulty is that it is difficult to prepare seedlings.You can watch the video on how to grow potato seedlings and how to transplant them into beds correctly.
How to protect seedlings from diseases and pests?
Young potato shoots are susceptible to many diseases, among which fungal diseases are common: late blight and ring rot.
Late blight can attack adult plants at a time when humidity in the soil and air increases. The leaves begin to become covered with brown spots on top and a white coating on the bottom. Both stems and tubers suffer from potato rot. The progression of the disease is indicated by hard spots on the root crops, then they completely rot. To preserve seed potatoes and prevent disease, the vegetable stems should be hilled high. And diseased tops are removed and destroyed before harvesting the tubers. Affected plants are treated with Bordeaux mixture three times during the summer.
Ring rot is recognized by round, cream-colored spots with glassy areas. If diseased tubers are stored, the entire crop will die.
Among crop pests, the Colorado potato beetle and its larvae come first. But to protect against the parasite, there are many chemical and folk remedies that must be used several times during the growing season of the vegetable plant.
Harvesting and storage
They begin to harvest potatoes when the tops dry out. The dug up nodules leave everything behind, despite their small size. Potatoes must be dried under an awning or in a barn. Drying should take at least three to five days.
It is necessary to keep seed potatoes intact until spring, so ideal conditions are created for them:
- Before placing vegetable tubers in the cellar, the room is treated with table salt (150 grams), slaked lime (two kilograms), and copper sulfate (one kilogram) diluted in ten liters of water. The cellar is also ventilated, and then the tubers are placed in boxes made of wooden slats. To preserve their qualities, potatoes need a temperature of two to four degrees above zero and a humidity of seventy to eighty percent.
- You can also place potatoes on a glazed balcony or loggia. Cover the boxes with tubers with a warm blanket or straw on top.
- If there are no conditions for storing root vegetables, then a refrigerator will do. It is safer to place the tubers on the bottom shelf in a paper bag.
You can store new varieties of vegetables grown from seeds in your apartment if you monitor storage conditions during the winter. It is necessary to constantly inspect the fruits in order to promptly remove damaged and rotten ones.
Next year, seed potatoes will produce more tubers, and gradually the vegetable yield will increase.
