Gardening Expert Views on To Chit or Not To Chit

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Many kitchen gardeners value chitting practices while gardening experts view differ on the benefits of allowing green shoots to appear on seed potatoes before planting.

Chitting Homeguard Seed Potatoes February 2012. Photo credit: Susan Morris

Process of Chitting Seed Potato Varieties

Recent purchases of seed potato varieties are left in a light place with some warmth to kickstart the chitting process. The first sign of chitting is that substantial green shoots appear from the tuber which signals that the dormancy of the seed potato tuber has been shaken. Typically the chitted seed potato tuber is then planted outdoors in soil with the tuber sprout(s) facing upwards, or rose end to the sky.

Gardening experts argue that, once started, the chitting process does not stop with the planting of the seed potato tuber and that the premature aging means earlier senescence, dying of the plant leaves and a shorter growing season leading to poorer harvests of potatoes from a vegetable garden or allotment.

Gardening Expert View on Not Chitting Potato Seed Tubers

Alan Romans, merchant of specialist seed potatoes and writer/compiler of potato guides in his Alan Romans’ Guide To Seed Potato Varieties Fourth Edition (Alan Romans, 2008) argues “Chitting is not essential. It can bring crops forward but soil temperature at planting time can make more difference. I feel that a concept of appropriate ‘seed conditioning’ would be more helpful”.

In his expert guide, Alan Romans goes on to describe how stronger varieties would benefit from being prevented from chitting and how less robust varieties, particularly those that may have started chitting before purchase, may become more brittle before planting by the further chitting process by the home gardener.

Gardening Expert View on Chitting Potato Seed Tubers

In The Royal Horticultural Society book, Vegetable & Fruit Gardening The Definitive Guide To Successful Growing, edited by Michael Pollock (Dorling Kindersley, 2008) Guy Barter argues that chitting seed potatoes, if done correctly, can promote early growth, writing that once midwinter purchases of tubers arrive, possibly by mail order, “place them upright in trays, with the most eyes or dormant sprouts.. uppermost in a cool, frost-free, light place. They will send out healthy, short, green shoots… ideally 12mm (1/2 in) long. Kept in a warm, dark place, chits will be pale, weak and become too long.”

Keen gardeners with adequate space, enough time and inclination could set up their own home trials to test whether to chit or not to chit with the potato seed varieties that they like to grow. Bakestraw Garden-based experiments on growing potatoes have considered in earlier seasons the three varieties of Majestic, Mimi and Cosmos, under different seed and soil conditioning.

Apple Tree Wassail

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This year I’ll be singing this Wassail, a traditional winter song from Hampshire, in the orchard:

Old apple tree, we’ll wassail thee and hoping thou wilt bear

The lord does know where we shall be to be merry another year

So bloom well and So bear well and so merry let us be

Let every man drink up his cup and a health to the old apple tree.

Banking Green Chilli Seed

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This year’s green chilli were an impressive zero food miles produce considering… they were found wilted on the back of a SALE shelf in a garden centre and bought for 30 pence for six plug plants.

Green Chillis Growing Indoors. Photo credit: Susan Morris

Now that the Mini Seed Bank has arrived from the Kew shop, the green chilli seed has been banked for next year.

Arrival of a Mini Seed Bank from Kew. Photo Credit: Susan Morris

Making Leaf Mould Experiment Month 1 Results

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Chicken wire bin versus the jute bags.  Here are the results at the end of the month 1 and an almost daily dose of rainwater here in central Scotland.  Jute bag going strong while it’s weight has increased.  Sizeable reduction in the chicken wire bin with some leaves on the ground available for topping up.

Making Leaf Mould Experiment. The Hand Knitted Jute Bag at end of first month. Photo credit: Susan Morris

Making Leaf Mould Experiment. The Chicken Wire Bin at end of first month of composting. Photo credit: Susan Morris

Making Leaf Mould Experiment

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Make Leaf Mould With Wet Fallen Leaves. Photo credit: Susan Morris

After making successful soil improver from fallen leaves in the Bakestraw garden using black plastic bags and two years’ patience, this Autumn I’m testing two different methods of open composting with DIY chicken wire bins and handmade jute bags.  Results from the decaying process of this season’s leaf collection into a mulch by Spring and a soil improver by October 2012 will be compared against the control product of the holely black plastic bags.

Basics of Making a Leaf Mould

1.  Collect fallen leaves as and when you can into a bag or bin.  Shredding leaves with a lawn mower (if dry), special leaf blower vacuum (if available) or tearing up using your hands in gloves will speed up decomposition.

2.  Moisten dry leaves with water to encourage decaying process.  This is not a problem in Scotland where fallen leaves are usually wet when raking.

3.  The more well rotted the leaf mould becomes, the finer the structure.  Riddling is an option for earlier use.

Watch Monty Don’s Video Demonstration of making a leaf mould.

Why Experiment with Making Leaf Mould?

As Celia Brooks Brown writes about perforated black plastic bags, in New Urban Farmer From Plot to Plate: A Year on the Allotment (2010),

they don’t look very attractive, but the result is a free and renewable source of organic matter (p.175).

In the Bakestraw garden, continuing to use 10+ large heavy duty plastic bags for making leaf mould made less sense this year when I have chicken wire to recycle from rabbit proofing the vegetable garden.  Out of curiousity I was going to buy some jute sacks from a nursery but I am a keen knitter. So within a couple of hours with a pair of extreme knitting needles and a ball of Gardman jute twine, I completed a bespoke leaf mould jute bag with drawstrings that will biodegrade as my leaf mould progresses.

Does the Sort of Leaves Used Matter?

Freely available leaves are the best although avoid evergreen leaves, as Diane Millis in The Little Green Book of Gardening: 250 Tips for an Eco Lifestyle (2010) advises against holly, laurel or Leyland cypress and other conifers as they take longer to decay.

I have found that leaves from apple and plum trees make up the bulk of my leaf mould with some sycamore and birch leaves which generally have a longer decaying process than the fruit tree leaves.

In The Organic Garden: Green Gardening for a Healthy Planet (2007) Allan Shepherd states that

In the US it is fairly common practice to go into the streets and kidnap leaves piled up for removal by the council.

In a recent conversation about leaves in Scotland, it was believed that once the leaves have fallen from trees, the material is not owned by the owner of the tree although it was agreed that, as a curtesy, ask permission if recycling fallen leaves on someone else’s land or path for making your own leaf mould.