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Comment by chronogram | Hacker News Reader

Just cut the roots and spots out. That’s why you have the little knife on the vegetable peeler. I’ve never seen a green potato in my life, I’d probably just cut all the green away, maybe that’s what happens when you don’t keep them in a dry place, like outside of a potato sack.

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Or plant it, if it's a decent size, it can yield over 1lbs of potatoes in 3 months. In my area it's low maintenance. If you have limited space, I've had 5 lbs worth in a 15 gallon bag, it has about the same footprint as an office chair.

Without trying hard (ie: just burying some buds/ears in soil, no hilling or anything), I got 3lb out of a 5 gallon construction bucket of enriched soil (ie: thirds of dirt, peat moss and compost)

I’ll probably do a few more buckets, but kale, tomatoes and peppers get me more value than potatoes.

Just throwing cut potatoes into my compost heap yields way more potatoes than I personally need.

Is this for real?? Is it that easy? I'd like to try that

It works for me. Into a resting (no longer hot) compost I just bury some cut fingerlings and wait a bit.

Definitely happens.

Composting guides tell you not to compost raw potato peels because instead of a nutrient-rich compost pile you'll grow a bunch of potatoes and they'll get much of the good stuff from the pile.

That said, I suppose it would be an easy way to grow potatoes.

Same here. Sprouted potatoes look absolutely horrible but I can't bring myself to throw out a bag of potatoes just because they look awful. Just cut away and boil or bake. It even creeps me out to even hold sprouted potatoes. I wonder what is it about sprouted potatoes that repulses people so much.

To be fair, the sprouts look like worms crawling out of the potato. I guess it's a good thing we find them repulsive, since they're poisonous.

The sprouts probably trigger heuristics for avoiding food with fungus growing on it.

Green is chlorophyll, which happens if they are in light, mostly. Chlorophyll itself isn't bad, but apparently the light also a accelerates the development of the alkaloids at issue, so it's a signal of unsafety.

> That’s why you have the little knife on the vegetable peeler

I call that part the gouger

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