Chitting Potatoes Gives Them a Head Start
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Chitting potatoes is a way of pre-sprouting the seed potatoes before planting, giving the tubers a valuable head start, encouraging faster growth and heavier crops once they are planted. Discover when and how to chit potatoes.
Chitting potatoes (also called pre-sprouting or greensprouting) is a simple technique for giving your potato crop an early boost. By encouraging seed potatoes to sprout before planting, you set the stage for faster growth once they’re in the soil.
Seed potatoes are small tubers available online or at local garden centers and farm stores used for growing potatoes. When you plant a seed potato, you’re planting a tuber grown the previous season. Chitting simply jump-starts the growing process by encouraging these seed potatoes to sprout before planting.
Pre-sprouting potatoes is especially helpful in cooler climates or regions with shorter growing seasons. Because chitted potatoes begin sprouting early, they tend to emerge from the soil faster after planting, often resulting in earlier growth and, sometimes, an earlier harvest.
While you don’t need to chit potatoes to grow them successfully, it’s a handy technique for gardeners hoping to get a head start.
This guide covers what chitting potatoes is, when it’s worthwhile, and how to do it step by step, so you can decide if it’s right for your garden. For a complete overview of growing potatoes, check out: How to Grow Potatoes: A Complete Guide for Home Gardeners.
What Is Chitting (and What It Isn’t)
Chitting potatoes simply means encouraging seed potatoes to sprout before they’re planted in the garden. By giving potatoes the right conditions, you allow sturdy sprouts to form so plants can get growing more quickly once they’re in the soil.
Chitting is sometimes confused with potatoes sprouting accidentally in storage, but the two aren’t quite the same. When potatoes sprout in a warm, dark place, the sprouts tend to be long, pale, and fragile. Chitting, on the other hand, produces short, sturdy sprouts that are better suited for planting.
It’s also helpful to understand what chitting does and does not do:
- It isn’t required for growing potatoes successfully.
- It doesn’t replace good soil, proper planting time, or regular care.
- It won’t fix poor-quality or diseased seed potatoes.
Think of chitting as a helpful option rather than a rule. In some areas with cooler springs or shorter growing seasons, it can be a useful way to give potatoes a bit of a head start. In others, planting seed potatoes directly in the ground works just fine.
Does Chitting Potatoes Really Help?
Chitting potatoes can be a useful way to give your crop a head start, especially in areas where spring conditions are less predictable. By encouraging seed potatoes to sprout before planting, chitting helps plants get growing sooner once they’re in the ground.
In cooler climates or areas with shorter growing seasons, pre-sprouted potatoes often emerge more quickly after planting. Because growth has already begun, plants can take advantage of early spring conditions and establish themselves before summer heat arrives. This can be especially helpful when spring weather is slow to warm and planting windows feel tight.
Even in milder climates, planting pre-sprouted potato seeds will encourage earlier growth. While potatoes planted directly in warm soil will sprout on their own, pre-sprouting can help ensure strong, visible growth right from the start.
It’s important to keep expectations realistic. Chitting won’t dramatically boost yields or ensure a flawless harvest. Its main advantage is that it encourages potatoes to emerge and grow earlier, a benefit that’s especially valuable for early potatoes that mature quickly.
If you want to get a head start on the season or want to make the most of your planting window, chitting is a simple, low-effort process that can pay off in the spring garden.
When to Start Chitting Potatoes
If you decide to presprout your potatoes, timing matters. Chitting too early can result in long, fragile sprouts, while starting too late may not provide much benefit. Aim to plant potatoes in early spring, about 2 to 4 weeks before your last expected frost date, once the soil has drained and soil temperatures have warmed to at least 45°F (7°C).
To time chitting properly, count backward from your planned planting date. Starting the process about 3 to 4 weeks before planting. This will allow enough time for short, sturdy sprouts to form without becoming overgrown.
How to Chit Potatoes (Step by Step)
Chitting potatoes is a simple process that requires very little effort or space. The goal is to encourage short, sturdy sprouts that will handle planting well and get growing quickly once they’re in the soil.
Once you have sourced your seed potatoes and figured out your planting time, you can begin to chit or green sprout the potato seeds:
Step 1: Start with Healthy Seed Potatoes
Choose firm, healthy seed potatoes with no signs of rot, mold, soft spots, or shriveling. Starting with strong, disease-free seed gives your crop the best possible beginning.
Whenever possible, use certified seed potatoes purchased from a reputable garden center, farm store, or mail-order supplier. Certified seed potatoes are inspected and tested to reduce the risk of disease and ensure the variety is true to type. While it may be tempting to plant grocery store potatoes, they are often treated with sprout inhibitors and may carry diseases that can persist in your soil.
Before chitting, take a few minutes to inspect your seed potatoes and remove any damaged tubers. If you’d like more guidance on selecting and handling seed potatoes before this stage, this guide walks through the process in detail: Sourcing Seed Potatoes for the Backyard Garden.
Step 2: Position Potatoes with the Eyes Facing Up
Examine each seed potato and look for the end with the most eyes. This is often called the rose end, and it’s where sprouts will emerge.
Place the seed potatoes in a single layer with the rose end facing up. Egg carton, shallow tray, cardboard box, or recycled produce containers work well and help keep potatoes from rolling around.
Step 3: Warmth to Break Dormancy
To encourage sprouting, place the seed potatoes in a warm, dark location for about a week. Temperatures around 65–70°F (18–21°C) help break dormancy and trigger sprouting. You may begin to see tiny sprouts forming at the eyes during this stage.
Step 4: Move to Light for Strong Sprouts
Once sprouts begin to appear, move the potatoes to a cooler location with bright, indirect light. A garage or shed with a window where the temperatures around 50–55°F (10–13°C) is ideal.
Light encourages sprouts to grow short, sturdy, and green or purple, rather than long and pale. This step is what makes chitted potatoes different from potatoes that sprout accidentally in storage.
Step 5: Allow Sprouts to Develop
Over the next couple of weeks, let the sprouts continue to grow until they are about 1–2 inches long. Handle chitted potatoes gently to avoid breaking off the sprouts, especially just before planting.
At this stage, the potatoes are ready for planting. If weather delays planting after your potatoes have already sprouted, move them to a slightly cooler, less-lit location to slow further growth until planting conditions improve.
Step 6: Cutting Seed Potatoes (Optional)
Small to medium-sized seed potatoes can be planted whole with no problem. But you can divide large potatoes into smaller pieces. Cutting seed potatoes is a thrifty way to stretch your seed stock and potentially increase your yield, since each piece will grow into a potato plant that produces multiple tubers.
When cutting seed potatoes, aim for egg-sized pieces, each with at least two to three healthy eyes or sprouts. Use a clean, sharp knife to make the cuts.
After cutting, allow the pieces to sit for a few days so the cut surfaces can dry and heal. They should feel slightly leathery and dry to the touch before planting, which helps reduce the risk of soil rot. You can also dip the freshly cut ends in wood ash to help dry and protect the cut surface. Plant cut potatoes within a few days. Once they are cut, the quality begins to decline.
Step 7: Planting Chitted Potatoes
Once your seed potatoes have developed short, sturdy sprouts, they’re ready to be planted. Chitted seed potatoes are planted the same way as unsprouted seed potatoes, with just a little extra care to protect the sprouts.
When planting, place chitted potatoes with the sprouts facing up. This helps the shoots grow toward the soil surface more easily, and grow into healthy potato foliage.
Is Chitting Potatoes Worth It?
Chitting potatoes is a simple way to give your potato crop a more intentional start. By encouraging seed potatoes to sprout before planting, you can shorten the time it takes for plants to emerge, help them establish more quickly in cool spring soil, and often enjoy earlier growth and harvests.
While chitting isn’t required for growing potatoes, it can be especially useful in cooler climates, short growing seasons, or slow-to-warm springs.
If you like giving your garden a head start and working with plants before they ever go into the ground, chitting is an easy technique worth trying. And as with many garden experiments, the best way to know if it’s right for you is to try it and see how your potatoes respond.
To see how chitting fits into the full potato growing process, from choosing seed potatoes to planting, harvesting, and storage, visit: How to Grow Potatoes: A Complete Guide for Home Gardeners.
Want to Learn How to Grow Potatoes?
You will find everything you need to start growing potatoes in my PDF eBook, Grow a Good Life Guide to Growing Potatoes. Whether you are striving for a few gourmet fingerling potatoes or a large crop for winter food storage, this guide will show how you can grow your own, organic, homegrown potatoes.
Finding a sunny, 50 degree location is a challenge.
Kevin, You don’t need sun, just daylight. To break dormancy, maintain a warm temperature of around 70°F (21°C) in a dark area to encourage sprouting. Once you see sprouts, move them to a cooler location with some indirect light at around 50°F (10°C) for healthy green sprouts. So, prioritize the temperature and light exposure, whether it’s natural or artificial, for successful potato chitting.
What if the potato has a very long sprout. Do you coil it around the potato or remove it?
Sandra, Bury the sprout as best as you can. You can even dig a trench and lay the sprout horizontal if it is very long.
First off, thank you — your article was very thorough. However, our NC Extension Service says to keep the seed potatoes in a warm, sunny location to help the sprouts grow (chitting) but your advice indicates a warm, dark location. Sometimes, this is the problem with the internet … which instructions does one follow? For a potato newbie, it’s very confusing. I have to believe that the way you are instructing is the way you’ve done your potatoes in the past and have had success with this method, whereas this is my first year at attempting a potato crop from seed potatoes and obviously, I want it to be a success, too. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Kathy, In the article, I suggested breaking dormancy in a dark area and then introducing the potatoes to light as the sprouts develop so they green up. However, either way will work ok. One of the greatest things about the internet is everyone can share his or her experiences and you get to experiment to find out what works for you.
Need planting info: Are these sprouts roots or stems, so… do I plant them facing up or down? If roots, hoe deep. If stem, do I leave green parts above ground and will frost kill them, or how deep do I burry them to protect them from frost for 1 month?
Mike, I have linked to several articles on growing potatoes above under, “Read on for more potato growing tips.” These will provide more growing information. The sprouts are stems, and you plant them face up. Potatoes can be planted in early spring as soon as the ground can be worked, and once the soil temperature reaches 45ËšF. Frost will damage the leaves and shoots, but if the seed potato is below the frost line, it will be insulated from damage.
After you cut the potatoes in sections and dip them in wood ash how long do you have to wait to plant or can you plant right away.
Cathy, Give it a day or two to callus over before planting.
I have tried planting seed potatoes before. I have been cutting my pieces too small. I have been only leaving 1 eye on the cutting & not letting them heal over. I have been loosing a lot of the cuttings as they are probably drying out too quickly in the ground. Rubbing them with wood ashes is a very interesting idea that I would never have thought of. This I will try this year, thank’s. We are having a very cold, snowy, wet spring so far this spring. Our ground is very wet in the spring anyway so this weather is going to be a challenge planting a garden at all
I’ve planted several potatoes over the years, plain old commercial sold in the grocery story potatoes. I don’t think any have failed to produce. I just wait to see sprouts in the pantry and save those for the garden. It’s been fun gathering the little spuds. They don’t get very large either because I harvest too soon, or I don’t do much prep or tending. But it’s a fun little activity for the kids.
Mary, It IS fun and small potatoes are so tasty.
THIS!! Thanks for this. I’ve been wondering what the difference is between the eyes on my forlorn lost-in-the-pantry- potatoes and garden center “seed” potatoes. If the former works, I’m about to get busy with potato gardening. Thanks!
This was an interesting read! Is this what happens when pototoes “go bad’ and start sprouting in the kitchen?
Vanessa, Yes, if your kitchen potatoes are organic, you can plant them when they sprout. Some potatoes from the grocery store are sprayed with a sprout inhibitor that will discourage the plant to grow.
This is the first year that I’ve saved seed potatoes & have been only somewhat successful – the potatoes that I set aside for actual “seed” started to spout much earlier than I would have liked (I’m thinking because we had a much warmer winter than usual and this was reflected in our cold cellar temps). I rubbed off the longest sprouts and placed the potatoes under the grow lights in the coolish basement – and they are hanging in there so far. Hopefully we have a quick warm up after this latest round of cold weather so that I can get them in the ground.
Margaret, I didn’t have a lot of potatoes to store this year, but I did notice that they were sprouting really early due to our warm winter. I don’t think they would have made it to spring planting. Hopefully, you can get yours in the ground soon.