The Potato Seed Debate

This Spring I was talking to a friend of mine who is also an avid gardener, we were debating whether it was worth spending the money on seed potato when there are rumours of being able to grow potatoes from peelings of grocery store varieties. The thing is, seed potato is expensive, I bought 5 of them for $6, thats over $1 per potato, and, well, there are so many potatoes already sprouting in your cupboard anyhow....
So I decided to try it, I planted one row of Red Potatoes that I bought at the Winter Farmers Market, and I planted one row of Yellow Seed Potato,  from a company based in the Netherlands that I'd never heard of before. The race was on.

First I had to "chit" them, which meant simply to sprout them, then I cut them into one ounce pieces, around the nicest sprouted eyes. Here they are sprouting with some ginger, a different experiment.

Then, on April 5th, I planted them. As I was planning on hilling them up during the growing season, I dug and planted them in trenches, with a mound of soil on either side.

And then they started to grow, really quickly. Every week they grew another 5 cm, so every week I was hilling dirt up around them.

And then they got HUGE, and started blooming, which signals the beginning of tuber formation.

You can dig up potatoes at anytime now, but the longer you wait, the bigger they will be.

On Sept 29th we finished out potato harvest, digging up all of the Yellow and half of the Reds. The results: 

Yellow Seed Potato- 8.8kg

Red Market Potato-4.375kg

The seed potato apparently does better because it has fewer diseases as it is grown in an area of the world where no aphids exist (like the far north, or isolated islands) so the vines already have less to challenge them. I will grow from seed again, but will change the company I get it from, to avoid buying seeds with Potato Scab again,