Potato Sprout Inhibitor: Myth or Fact?

Hello friends, I hope you can enjoy your Friday and weekend despite all the 2020 madness.

I'm getting ready to plant the rest of my garden (the warm weather stuff), and have a box of potatoes I've stored away from trips to the grocery. I've grown potatoes at least 5 years in a row to varying success, using both "standard" potato seeds and sprouted store bought potatoes, and was hoping to pick the brains of some of our gardeners (thanks in advance!) regarding reusing grocery potatoes for seed.

I've seen again and again reference to a growth inhibitor that commercial growers use, and which renders potatoes useless as seeds. Here's an example from coloradostate.edu's website:

Potatoes in the grocery store are typically treated with a sprout inhibitor and will not grow if planted in a garden. It is best to buy certified seed each spring that is inspected and within acceptable limits for diseases. Garden centers, reputable, garden catalogs, or your local CSU Extension Agent are all sources of certified seed.

extension.colostate.edu...

That said, I've always had success (although, as I admitted in a prior paragraph to varying degrees) growing potatoes from store bought seed. I spoke with a good friend who built her own greenhouse to grow in Alaska, as well as heading a huge community garden project in a nearby hot spring, and she agreed with me--she gets all of her potato seeds from the grocery store.

Is it possible that we are just not being given the correct information (so we don't understand how regenerative certain plants are, and how easy it is to start a plant of one's own?)...
OR
Are the plants that one gets from a grocery store potato seed really significatly less productive, and therefore a waste of gardening space?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, here's a video showing some store bought food that can be regrown. Are there any you can think of that the video didn't mention?

It's a beautiful day to plant... looking forward to playing in the dirt!

a reply to: zosimov

I can't speak for the States but here in my experience with potatoes they certainly do grow.
We have a compost bay divided into three compartments at various stages.
We don't even try to compost our potato peelings because we ended up with plants growing in the bay! Complete with little spuds so don't think they're too inhibited.

Hope that's helpful.

If they use sprout inhibitor on the potatoes that I buy in the store.... It isn't worth crap, because they sprout.

I have planted store bought potatoes and they grew just fine. I bought smaller potatoes and cut them in half before planting.

a reply to: Tulpa

I've had the same experience with potatoes growing in the compost! This year, I rescued an onion from "the pit" and replanted it; it's doing fine.

Thanks for the input. It certainly does help I'm leaning towards the growth inhibitor being a myth, myself. (Though not sure if store bought plants might have more disease? I certainly hope not, but it's a thought.)

a reply to: butcherguy

Thanks for weighing in! I've had similar experiences growing the potatoes that I don't eat on time.

I wonder why so many sites mention the growth inhibitor. Farmers probably don't like the idea of giving away seed for free?
I guess I don't blame them, but once you've sold something, you can't determine how it's going to be used.

ooo oooo i know this one!!!! YES they are "treated" with a growth inhibitor.... and what is that "inhibitor" you may ask.... why its radiation of course!!

www.fda.gov...

Delay of Sprouting and Ripening – to inhibit sprouting (e.g., potatoes) and delay ripening of fruit to increase longevity.

a reply to: smkymcnugget420

Interesting! Thanks for the extra info.

a reply to: zosimov

The first year I had my allotment I used chitted potatoes from a sack I'd bought from a local farmer.
These grew fine and I had quite a good crop indeed from them.

The next couple of years I bought some from a supplier simply because I wanted to grow different varieties of potatoes.

I think a lot depends on the soil and other growing conditions but generally speaking I think most potatoes will grow regardless of the spiel.

a reply to: Freeborn

So far, 5/5 of us (including the friend I mentioned in the OP) have had success growing "inhibited" potatoes.

I was looking for potato seeds this year for just the reason you mentioned--I have only russets now and wanted some good purple, golds, and reds. I agree that buying variety is good as well.

I had several red, Yukon Gold, and russets I got at the farmers market. I was concerned about the same thing you are, but most older potatoes threw out roots, so I not only planted them, but planted about 25 assorted seed potatoes as well for safety. I even built a special raised bed 6' x 8' x 12" deep.

I set the new raised bed on a section of the lawn, and used a broad fork to areate the hard clay soil below. I threw in in composted manure and 50 gallons of compost tea over the aerated lawn, then an inch of compost, then the potatoes, with a bit of compost over them. As they grew up, I threw in more compost and layers of organic straw up to about 16". They are doing great, and I expect to have a bumper crop of potatoes this year.

If you aren't already growing with the no till / living soil method, you should look into it. It makes gardening far easier, no weeds, and the garden grows like crazy. You also save on watering.

Charles Dowding is an old Englishman who explains how to do this method. His youtube videos are fun to watch, and he is a super happy down to Earth kind of guy.

I think your store bought seed potatoes will be just fine

originally posted by: visitedbythem


If you aren't already growing with the no till / living soil method, you should look into it. It makes gardening far easier, no weeds, and the garden grows like crazy. You also save on watering.

Charles Dowding is an old Englishman who explains how to do this method. His youtube videos are fun to watch, and he is a super happy down to Earth kind of guy.

I think your store bought seed potatoes will be just fine

I'll check out his videos. Thanks for the tip!!

Been planting potatoes for years on my property. If you soak those potatoes in some water and use your hands to wipe off the potato, avoiding knocking off any sprouts, the potatoes usually produce pretty decently. I noticed that when I put store potatoes without washing them or soaking them in the field, all the plants around them did not grow as big resulting in less overall potato yield.

It depends on what the anti-sprouting chemistry is, it was glyphosate before but they have got rid of that supposedly because it was effecting crop yield. A potato farmer I know told me he was required to spray the plants with glyphosate preharvest to be able to sell to McDonalds. He started using urea because it was cheaper and easier for fertilizer, and his potatoes turned black inside and he lost the McDs contract, nobody wants frenchfries with black on them. Use 10/20/20 fertilizer, no organic based fertilizers made from manure. There are organic 10 20 20 fertilizers out there some places, and it is more potent than the regular versions, you need half of what some of the commercial ones use. Of course, that is a general statement....sometimes the commercial ones are good, it depends on the manufacturer. The organic is way more expensive but I had good luck with using that for my little field, I usually scarf up ten meals of little potatoes after they go flower...that gets me through the high price times. Then I get about a bushel of good potatoes from the field, it is not a big field though. I need to put more sand in it, potatoes create an enzyme that desolves rock and sand like dandelions do. The lack of sand forces the clay ground to harden and the potatoes get left smaller, but usually I get lots of baby potatoes that way and everyone loves to small ones boiled with the skins on.

My field is about maybe ten feet times twenty five feet, I usually keep some of the old potatoes in the garden, that way I have some of the original crop from over twelve years ago that I transplant. I also got lots of seed pods on the plants last year and I have about two hundred seeds to try to grow plants from. Those could be a cross between lots of different kinds I had in the garden, some Kennebecks, some mountains, and some red potatoes and even some Yukon golds are planted. I guess they use the seeds to start new varieties. It is questionable whether my new potatoes will be a new hybrid or not.

Keep your tomato plants far away from the potatoes, they are competitive and you will wind up with big powerful plants and no fruit or potatoes. Learned that about five years ago, and it does seem to be very true, better yield if the tomatoes are twenty feet away from the potato field. I use planters for my tomato plants or a different garden area.

a reply to: rickymouse

Lots of great info here, thanks!! (For how long do you soak the potatoes?)

originally posted by: smkymcnugget420
ooo oooo i know this one!!!! YES they are "treated" with a growth inhibitor.... and what is that "inhibitor" you may ask.... why its radiation of course!!

www.fda.gov...

Delay of Sprouting and Ripening – to inhibit sprouting (e.g., potatoes) and delay ripening of fruit to increase longevity.

Because potatoes are high in potassium, often they contain a little radioactive elements. It depends on what is in the ground though. Bananas are much higher in bioactive radioactive compounds than potatoes. Around here there is not much radioactive potassium in the soils but some areas have more and sometimes store bought potatoes are high too.

www.houstonpress.com...

Remember though, radioactive pottassium kills microbes, shorts them out.........including viruses. www.thailandmedical.news...

originally posted by: zosimov
a reply to: rickymouse

Lots of great info here, thanks!! (For how long do you soak the potatoes?)

I usually cut them then soak them for maybe ten minutes, then I just dump out the water and let them sit in the wheelbarrow till I go plant them. Sometimes letting them sit and dry keeps the potato from rotting if the soils are wet. I read that years ago too on a agricultural site, not sure if it is true, but it seems to work well. I remember when I was young we cut seed potatoes and let them dry and put them into the bins of the potato planter on the farm. It was fun planting strawberries on the eight row planter too, you had to make sure not to get your fingers stuck in the little fingers as they went by. I had to go back and fill in where misses occurred, many of the spots were from my missing plants. The second year I was much better at putting the plants into the fingers so I did not have much to go and fill in. Everyone missed an occasional plant, but I missed more than my uncles did.

I have farming in my blood, mostly potatoes and berries though. Also, I love to grow cucumbers.

Stop supporting satanic companies by using their poisons. Every seed has a natural sprouting inhibitor and some are not hard to extract. Like Hordeninein barley sprouts. Lol, I bought a 60 pound bag to get a cheap source of protein (for $15) when I was nuts into bodybuilding and 10 years later I still have 50 pounds of the stuff. Let's say the taste is too pronounced and the hordenine is MAO inhibitor and kinda acetylcholine agonist. For me the effect is too similar to tyramine and it's increasing my blood pressure at doses that would make sense as a protein source.
It is however very useful for making diy ethanol. I make a very strong tea of it, add yeast and sugar and the fermentation is wild. It's an interresting beer too. Maybe it's the B vitamins or some amino acids or alkaloids but this stuff makes you drunk super fast while delivering weird mental clarity.
With ethanolic extraction you could probably get reasonably pure hordenine product

Btw combined with Phenylethylamine makes it a pretty strong/addictive nootropic drug

a reply to: rickymouse

Are you aware of your avatar's eyes?
I have just realized it after all those years

a reply to: visitedbythem

I have watched a number of his videos and due to his methods my garden is thriving and the worms are back. My soil is very clayish with alkaline. Every year I'd remove the leaves from the garden beds to make the beds look pretty. My soil became like concrete and nothing I did helped, to the point of removing loads of soil and bringing in new soil.

It wasn't until I started to leave the leaves on the gardens did the soil start to become softer and more like soil instead of rock hard clumps, it's nice and spongy now. Worms are everywhere and by winter time the leaves are all gone as the worms have pulled them underground where they create the new soil. In the meantime the leaves act as mulch during the hot sun and keep the earth cool and moist beneath.

I will never till my soil or rake it up again.

He is a really fascinating man.

Oh, and I've used sprouted grocery store potatoes with great success.

a reply to: PapagiorgioCZ

Yes, I know it has eyes, it was made that way by whomever carved it out of an old permineralized bone. When? Who knows, but it was done a long time ago. Maybe the Indians, maybe a civilization of hominids other than humans. The artifacts here in the ground are between a foot deep to as far as two feet deep. I have no way of knowing how deep this was, it was pushed out of the ground by the bulldozer when he dug the hole for our house. Being where it was, I would guess it was buried between a foot to three feet deep. The people here were pretty good at making things out of rocks and bones. The native Americans said it was probably an old ceremonial site so there should not be any burials here, they didn't usually bury people on top of hills.

Some potato i got from a shop, I left in the
fridge never had shoots grow on them.
but were they should have, it was weeping!

some I got from a market I left in my fridge
5 months later I see them growing from the bottom draw!!
Guess with may be GMO ?
oh I still have them. I will plant them on some wast land