Cloning potatoes

Planting potatoes

What a difference a word makes. Planting potatoes sounds so normal, wholesome, so farm and garden. Call it cloning potatoes, and now it sounds…weird. Really, it’s nothing special, just another word for the same old thing. Of the common garden veggies around here, potatoes and garlic are cloned: no seeds, no bees and flowers and pollination, instead, plant a piece of the original. Put a potato in the ground and it’s off to the races: vegetative propagation, direct multiplication—so simple!

In the photo: Yukon Gold seed potatoes. They’re regular potatoes, just smaller, and they haven’t been sprayed with sprout inhibitors (unlike many/most/all supermarket potatoes sold through the winter and till the next potato harvests).

Leave a Comment