If you haven' noticed, everything at Walmart is cheap. They do things very differently. They buy large quantities of sometimes low quality items for super cheap. Sometimes they use vicious tactics to get these prices (ask the farmer that grew those potatoes what they got paid!). Then they are able to make their money by selling to the masses at just above cost. This is why they put so many small businesses under. And why I personally choose to never, ever support their stores.

Just my opinion,
Mark

Anyway, that said, the main difference is likely bulk. When you order through Park Seeds, you are getting a very small amount from them, so they mark it up more. Walmart buys (probably from the same suppliers) the same stuff, but where Park Seeds might buy a few thousand potatoes, Walmart buys a few million. Huge bulk orders mean lower prices.

If I can get seed potatoes at a decent price, I buy them if not, I use stock from any super market...have for years and never had it bite me in the butt....The no sprout spray is just a fabrication for most companies. The price that they sell potatoes at, not likely are they going to spend money for any thing they don't have to spend it on....

On the contrary, I can show you huge lists of towns (including mine) that have refused to let Walmarts in because they fear for their local businesses. There are dozens of studies that have proven how local businesses are hurt, better jobs are lost and people are left with no option but to buy cheap chinese merchandise because there's no other option left available.

But I suppose you know better.
Or maybe you don't really care about the future, as long as you can save a buck.

By the way, this isn't about the potatoes. I honestly do hope they grow well.
I get my potato seed from Potato garden which used to be Ronnigers. They're a fair priced, small farm.

Actually, I do. We own a family business in a town with a half dozen walmarts. We have a costume store, and Walmart sells costumes and props for less than we can buy them wholesale during Halloween.

Did we whine and moan and start protests to run Walmart out of town when we couldn't compete with them? No, we didn't. We changed our inventory to simply not carry what Walmart does. It means we don't carry flavor of the month fad costumes (like movie related costumes, which is actually a Godsend, because we don't get stuck with out of date fad merchandise we can't sell), we carry higher quality merchandise, and we stay open year round to provide stuff for things other than Halloween.

So please, don't give me that "Oh it hurts small local business" nonsense. The only small local businesses it hurts are those that don't know how to run a business in the first place. Heck, its become one of our strong points to point out that we carry things that Walmart never would.

If anything, the claim can be made that the local businesses that had a monopoly on their product were just as bad as you claim Walmart to be. They had no competition, they overcharged, and the only reason they stayed in business was because the customers had no other choice but to shop with them.

You either adapt, or you die, and its not the competition's fault when you can't adapt.

I grow organic vegetables for a living. What if I lived in a small town with limited markets? If walmart came in bringing organic food from China, I couldn't possibly compete. There isn't hardly anything I could grow that they couldn't source for cheaper. If I managed to match their price, they could just subsidize the price with something else to drop it lower than mine and knock me out. My small family farm would dry up and If I chose to stay, i'd be working for minimum wage as a clerk at 'you know where'.

I can continue for weeks listing article after article here about the negative effects of walmart because there are so many and more written every day.

Here's one, try to read it with an open mind and be thankful that your business didn't go the way all these others did.

Walmart makes it's money by carrying very generic items in vast quantity. Let them, while you focus on the specialty niche. Because frankly, Walmart isn't going to care what you grow, you aren't a threat to them. They aren't going to go out of their way to drive you out of business by carrying cheaper versions of what you're doing unless you're growing what they already sell. They don't care what you do, mainly because nothing you do could ever be a threat to them.

Let them spend all the effort selling cheap russets, you market yourself as an organic specialty grower offering a wide selection of things people have never seen at a Walmart before and you'll do well.

If you want to really push how much you can get from one sweet potato, you can let it grow out a longer vine, and lay the vine down in a shallow tray of water or moist soil. The vine will root all the way along it, then you can chop the vine up into sections a couple inches long and each one of them will grow into a new plant as well.

Regular potatoes are easier though. Just toss one in the dirt and its pretty much happy.