Russian Banana Seed Potatoes
$19.99
$14.99
In stock
Russian Banana seed potatoes are a live seasonal product with limited fall availability. Grow your own healthy and nutritious crop of potatoes with high-quality, disease-free, certified seed potatoes!
Product Information
Russian Banana seed potatoes produce early maturing 2–3″ fingerling potatoes at around 75 days. Best enjoyed grilled, steamed, baked, or boiled. These oblong tan-skinned fingerlings with yellow flesh are a tasty garden treat in late summer and early fall. Makes a scrumptious side dish!
Note: Seed potatoes are packaged by weight. Each order is one unit weighing about 16 ounces (1 Lb). Sizes vary for individual potatoes. To maximize yield, we recommend sprouting and cutting potatoes.
1. Sprouting (Chitting) Seed Potatoes
Sprouting gives your potatoes a head start, and allows you to maximize the yield of purchased seed potatoes.
What You’ll Need:
- Healthy seed potatoes (certified disease-free)
- A bright, warm, and airy spot (65–75°F)
- An egg carton, tray, or shallow box
Steps:
- Orient correctly: Place each potato “eyes up” (you’ll see small dimples or buds).
- Provide light: Set them in indirect sunlight — a windowsill or shaded patio works well. Avoid full hot sun.
- Wait for sprouts: In 1–3 weeks, you’ll see sturdy, greenish-purple sprouts ½–1 inch long.
- Tip: If the sprouts get long and white, they’re reaching for light — move them to a brighter spot.
- Keep dry: Do not water. Moisture can cause rot.
2. Cutting Seed Potatoes (Optional)
If your seed potatoes are large (bigger than a chicken egg), you can cut them to maximize your supply.
Steps:
- Wait until after sprouting: Sprouts help you see where the “eyes” are.
- Use a clean knife: Wipe with rubbing alcohol between cuts to prevent disease spread.
- Cut into pieces: Each piece should have at least 2 healthy eyes and be about 1.5–2 ounces (roughly golf-ball size).
- Cure the cuts: Lay pieces out in a single layer in a warm, airy spot (65–70°F) for 2–3 days.
- This allows the cut surfaces to dry and form a tough, protective skin (“suberize”) that helps prevent rot.
3. Planting Tips
- Soil temp: Wait until soil is above 50°F. In Scottsdale, late fall or early winter is great (Nov–Dec).
- Depth: Plant 4–6 inches deep, sprouts facing up.
- Spacing: 10–12 inches apart, rows 2–3 feet apart.
- Hilling: Once plants reach 6–8 inches tall, mound soil or mulch around the stems to encourage more tubers.
Planting by Zones
Zones 9–10
- Plant potatoes during the cooler times of the year, starting in the fall and planting well into summer.
Zones 2–8
- Plant in spring 2–3 weeks after your last frost.
Chitting Seed Potatoes
- Chitting is the process of sprouting your potatoes before planting. This step encourages potatoes to grow a little quicker. In other words, chitting gives your potatoes a headstart!
- Place your uncut seed potatoes whole in an egg carton or seed tray with their eyes facing upward. Place your container in a light-filled, cool location out of direct sunlight.
- Watch for sprouts to form out of the eyes of the potato. Potatoes will be ready for cutting and planting in 4–6 weeks once sprouts are about an inch long.
Cutting Seed Potatoes
- Cut smaller tubers into quarters and larger tubers into 1.5–2-ounce pieces. Each piece should contain an “eye.” Store the freshly cut seed pieces at room temperature for 1–3 days to form a callus.
Planting Russian Banana Seed Potatoes
- The best practice is to let the cut potatoes “cure” or create a scab over the cut area. This will protect the plant from diseases.
- Potatoes should be planted in loose, fertile, and well-drained soil in full sun. Adding compost will ensure your potatoes thrive!
- Plant in raised mounds with a 3–4″ deep furrow in the center. Space seed pieces 6–12″ apart with their “eyes” facing up. Cover seed pieces with soil.
Growing Potatoes
- As plants grow, continue to pull up enough soil around the stems to keep them covered with at least 6″ of soil. Do not allow tubers to become exposed to sunlight. Potatoes that are exposed to sunlight will have poor flavor. For this reason, continue adding soil on top of the potatoes (mounting them) as best as you can.
- Potatoes need nitrogen for the best production. Mix organic fertilizer like Darn Good Fertilizer into the soil before planting. It is normal for potato plants to yellow as they reach maturity; do not give fertilizer at this stage.
- Water regularly until seasonal rains or during dry periods.
- Potatoes grow well in raised beds and containers. Good drainage is necessary to avoid rotting or disease.
Harvesting Potatoes
- Check for potatoes 2–3 weeks after your plants have finished flowering. Gently dig around and remove the potatoes you wish to eat fresh. If your soil is too compacted to dig out potatoes easily, you can easily “crack open” the soil with a pitchfork. Potatoes store well right in the ground! If you turn off the irrigation, you can leave unharvested potatoes in the ground for several weeks until you are ready to harvest them all. They will be more likely to get lost in the soil, though! We like to harvest all our potatoes at once and enjoy them in various dishes.
Storing Potatoes
- Potatoes keep best in temperatures between 35 and 40° F for long-term storage. Store dry potatoes in a dark, cool area with good ventilation.
- Russian Banana potatoes keep well for 3–5 weeks when properly stored.
Growing Potatoes in Containers
- Make sure your container is at least 20″ deep for growing in a container. Keep in mind containers will dry out faster because they have more surface area and less soil to hold onto moisture. Mulch heavily on the top layer of soil in the pot to keep the soil from drying out or heating up too much.
Southern California Pro-tips
- Mulch heavily around your potato plants to ensure the soil does not dry out or heat up too much.
- Frost will cause damage. Use row cover to protect plants from frost.
Southern California Pro-tips
- Choose companions that won’t interfere with your deeply rooted potato plants. We love planting alyssum, nasturtium, marigolds, and culinary herbs like chives and basil in our potato beds.
Additional Learning Resources
- New to starting crops from seeds? Please watch our Seed Starting Presentation to learn the basics!
- Learn about growing all our crops on our YouTube page!
- Having pest issues? Check out in-depth information for pests that can be an issue for potatoes at the UC Integrated Pest Management Site.
Knock (verified owner) –
best mash potatoes ive ever had! skin is very thin when first harvested, can almost be peeled with fingers, creamy flavorful potatoes when riced for mash potatoes, i cant wait to roast some! planted out mid nov and harvested march 31, i grew in 15 gallon grow bags, didnt bother will hilling up or adding soil, just stuck the potatoes about 6-8 inches into the soil and was basically hands off with this grow. i live in 10b, north county san diego, i was skeptical that potatoes could grow over the winter, but looks like they can with great success. ive only harvested one of the the 3 grow bags, and pulled 8lbs and 11oz of russian banana potatoes, and im convinced that if i hilled up/ added soil as they grew, i could improve my yield. this has been a unusually wet and cold winter/spring for our area, i only watered once and never got a chance to feed, so im very impressed with my yeld, i really did very little and got so much. the only thing i can say as a con, only apx the top half of my grow bags had potatoes, the bottom part just had roots, thats why im convinced next grow if i only fill the bag half way, then hill up and add more soil later on, ill get more tatoes. shame i cant upload pics here- 10/10 will be growing again!
Ed Whited –
First time grower of this variety. Easy to harvest with lots of small to medium sized elongated potatoes. I grew them in rows in the ground, planted in a trench about 6 inches deep. Planted in mid April 2024 and harvested in early July. Not a huge producer, 6 or 7 plants delivered about 8 or 9 pounds of very nice fingerling potatoes.
Cooked up my first batch as “French Fries” this morning. The skin was tender, the flesh was firm and held together well. Not soggy or too soft at all. Very good flavor and texture. I will grow these again and am planning to plant a entire 50 foot row of this variety. They are a cool and unusual shape and have an excellent flavor in my opinion.
Highly recommended.
Sarah Nagan –
Planted these 1/27/2025 and just harvested them 5/1/2025.
I let the entire potato sprout and planted 4 of them, each in their own 5 gallon bucket, half filled with 420 potting soil plus a 4-4-4 slow release organic fertilizer and mykos. They sprouted up through the dirt about 2 weeks later. I let the plants grow tall, up out of the bucket but wish I would have kept hilling up as the sprout grew as it would have been a lot easier than trying to get dirt around a more mature potato plant. I used a 50/50 blend of 420 potting soil and compost to hill up with.
They grew incredible, into huge bushy, lush, green plants. I installed drip irrigation to the buckets but it became an issue as the drip only dropped in one spot letting the rest of the bucket dry out – so I suggest making a ring with drip line with emitters of some sort to wet more of the bucket.
There will come a time when the plants all of the sudden start to lose their lushness. Fear not, this is when they begin making potatoes. From then on the plant will slowly start to decline. Also, be aware, that the bucket will be so full of roots at this point it will suck water up like it’s nothing – you will find it hard to overwater at this point. I started to just use a wand head, soaking the bucket until a little water ran from it.
Mine never flowered, but instead produced a sort of end of life blight looking brown areas all over the stems of all 3 plants so I just stopped watering them to let the skins thicken up for a couple of weeks.
I couldn’t wait and pulled one plant early and harvested about 3lbs of new potatoes from a single bucket. They were beautiful fingerlings, perfect in size, and just prolific as all get-out. Friends were digging up 2lbs of potato out of the ground and here I am with my easy bucket with 3lbs+. The flavor was buttery and delicious.
Highly recommended for containers.