Quote:
|
Increasing seed piece size increased yield of U.S. No.1 and total yield, while reducing tuber size.
|
There is a huge climate influence as well. Here in the hot humid South East, the size seed piece determines when the sprout will emerge and when it will flower and when the potatoes will be ready to harvest. Just a small delay at any stage and the plants will run over into the heat and drought of summer with resulting decrease in production.
I planted Kennebec last year and deliberately picked the biggest seed potatoes in the bin at a local store. I cut them to get 2 eyes per seed piece and put the largest chunks on one end of the row and the smallest at the other end. The results were instructive. Larger seed pieces produced larger size and nearly double the pounds of potatoes compared to smaller pieces. The only interaction I saw that was counter was based on the number of plants from each seed piece. If more than 3 sprouts emerged, average size of the spuds was smaller but pounds of production was about the same.
DarJones