If peeled too thickly the 'eyes' can grow. That is the only thing I can think of. I too have been composting them for 30+ yrs and have never grown a spud yet.

I've never heard you shouldn't put potato peels in the compost! When I had a heap, I always put them in...

Thankyou SBG and Bamboo for your reassurance. I notice that when my partner's peelings go in, they do produce shoots but it's just more green for the bin as far as I'm concerned. He refuses to use my Lancashire peeler!

Nobody told me about this and I don't know why it should be avoided. I never get volunteer potato plants, but tomatoes yes. So till it under if you don't want it. Life happens.

If I had to guess, my money would be on someone saying that, if there is any green on the peelings, you will poison people if you grow vegetables using the compost.

There really are people like that. They are the same ones who say don't compost rhubarb leaves.

Maybe you can get shoots if you peel the potatoes too thickly. I've seen people peel them with a knife and waste a lot of potato that way. If there is an eye in thick peel I guess it could well grow for a while.
Poisongardener I use my rhubarb leaves as a weed mulch round the crowns!

Potatoes turn green when exposed to sunlight or bright light. Don't ever eat green potatoes and store in a cool dark place. But if planted and they sprout a plant, they'll just be ordinary potatoes if they are kept underground as normal. Those would be fine to eat.

Thankyou all. It seems that there is no problem with spud peels or as Poison Gardener suggests, it could be based on myths or ignorance. I've certainly seen the advice somewhere and more than once, but cannot remember where. I am happy to see the odd long sprout in my bin but never find any potatoes within.

It's possibly to do with potato blight. The eyes sprout on the surface of the compost & give the blight more to grow on. Burying deep would help

More likely surely to be that you could encourage rats on an open compost heap and my Sister has even had one in a 'Dalek' bin as they are open to the ground. Otherwise I can't think of any reason not to!

Honeysuckle Do rats like potato peelings?
Darren Oh dear that doesn't sound good. What does potato blight look like?

It's similar to late blight on tomatoes, mould spreading fairly quickly along stems till they blacken. Basically the whole plant rots. On the actual potato there are dark patches going deep into the flesh

Our local council collects garden waste but insists that kitchen waste doesn’t go in the same bin. I found this difficult to understand so rang them. Apparently, the machine that breaks down all the garden waste doesn’t like wet peelings. Hm. I do add quite a lot of green kitchen waste but avoid anything else.

For a home compost bin most things can go in except meat (attracts rats), pet faeces and perennial weeds. At least that’s in our experience.