OK, lets start a thread about growing TPS True Potato Seeds

[applestar]

TZ and I had started a conversation about this very topic last week:
https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=143363#143363

Then the subject came up again this week:
https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=144942#144942

TZ, I hope it's OK to continue our conversation here in this thread.
I wanted to let you know that I've discovered that the All Blue potatoes from the Maine Potato Lady is prolific in making berries. There are lots, both in my main potato bed as well as both of the Potato Silos. As I mentioned before, the ones in the MPB are probably self-pollinated due to distinct flower timing of of the three different varieties planted there. In the Potato Silos, however mostly the All Blue and Adirondack Blue are flowering together, and both are producing berries, All Blue more than Adirondack Blue. Some Rose Gold were planted there and I'm pretty sure there was a brief overlap in All Blue and Rose Gold flowering, but I'm sorry to say I was too late in determining the first All Blue berries, but maybe it will become apparent based on first fruits to ripen.

All Blue flowers are light blue while Adirondack Blue flowers are white so right now, I am able to differentiate the two host plant of the berries. I suppose I should get out there and mark them somehow before all the flowers fall off....

[LindsayArthurRTR]

If the potatoes growing are sufferring from blight, is that transferred into the seed berries?

When do you harvest the berries? I have some berries on my butterfingers! I had noticed them but I didn't pay any attention to them because I didn't know that you could start them from seed.

How do you separate the seeds from the berries?

[TZ -OH6]

I've been collecting info for several months now and have just about everything I could find on the web cut and pasted in a long document. I'll organize it all tonight and post it tomorrow.

In short, if properly prepared, TPS are nearly disease free. The berries do not act like tomatoes and stay hard so you should leave them on the plant for at least 6 weeks and then let them sit around for a month or so in the house to ripen further before processing. The seed has a lot of germination inhibitors so they sprout better after a year or more, but certain treatments will let you have good germination the next spring. The berries fall off of the plants easily but don't rot easily when they hit the ground. Basically, when the plant dies pick the berries off the plant and off the ground and let them sit around the house for a while longer.


Commercial potatoes are 4n (tetraploid), and all varieties on the market are hybrids, so there is no such thing as growing out exactly what the parent was the way you do with OP tomatoes.


International agriculture interests are working on TPS lines that are more stable and aimed at commercial production (e.g. all seeds will produce round white potatoes, medium sized russet bakers etc). The private/grass roots movement is just the opposite using the inherent genetic variety/variability to recombine disease resistances and increase flavor, similar to what the traditional farmers do in the Andes.

[LindsayArthurRTR]

Now I am super interested!!! I can't wait to read the article

Do birds eat the berries?

[TZ -OH6]

I don't think anything eats the berries. They are full of nasty chemicals and tend not to ripen on the plant.

[TZ -OH6]

Some pics to pique your interest in exploring the world of potatoes from TPS
https://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/File:Tom%27s_beautiful_potatoes.JPG

https://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/File:And_more_potatoes.JPG

https://www.netikka.net/vallinmaki/potato%20project%202008-2009.pdf

https://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-breed-your-own-potatoes.html

If you have no idea what this thread is about you may want skip the technical stuff at the beginning and jump down to near the middle of the post to the section Why Grow from TPS?


Growing potatoes from true (botanical) seed (not “seed tubersâ€

[applestar]

Whoo hoo!
DEFINITELY a NEW PROJECT!

TZ, Thanks SO much for the super info package!

[TZ -OH6]

I just found a bad link (database -berry link) and fixed it.


Please let me know if any more are bad

[soil]

great info! I have a few potatoes berries I plan on growing the seeds. sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

[applestar]

Here's Adirondack Blue pretending to be a tomato, with a truss of berries. (Told you the Busy Bumblebees were going crazy in the Potato Silos )
Sorry for the poor quality -- I took the picture after sundown and had to use the night-photo feature.
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image7307.jpg[/img]

[gixxerific]

Great info TZ still computing all of it. Nice pics as well Applestar.

And me without a good potato harvest. Last year was great I did replant hopefully something will come of that. I have only had a few flowers in my history no berries that I know of.

[TZ -OH6]

That's some serious berry settage. I got two berries off of my All Blue (eight plants) last year, and 6-7 off my eight katahdin. But those berries have tons and tons of seeds. Little bitty teeny tiny seeds.

[applestar]

Oh, so this is THAT unusual? I thought WOW because I knew this isn't the way potatoes usually make berries, but I didn't realize it was more like !!!WOW!!!:shock:
... this isn't the only truss....

... but do you suppose this might impact on tuber production? [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145757#145757]I just robbed them for dinner[/url] and while the taters aren't rolling around in there, I found a few good 2.5" sized ones. Better than the ones in the main bed. I think they like the silos better -- maybe because they get the PM sun even though they're shaded 66% by the fence in the morning. The main location gets full morning sun, mid-day shade, PM sun, then late PM shade and more moisture. The plants are only about 24" high, whereas the silo plants are 4~5' tall.

... stress causes berry production, right? Do you suppose all the drought we're experiencing here has something to do with it? According the TWC, average rainfall for this months is 3.93 in. but the month to date is 1.36 in.

[TZ -OH6]

It's that unusual because so few commercial varieties have super fertile pollen. My Amey plant, which is the first of my plants from Tom to flower, has a bunch of berries like that just starting to form.

Flowering can be affected by stress, but berry production is due to the fertility of the plant's pollen (genetic ability), and the availability of pollinators. They probably also shed pollen/self fertilize when jostled, like a tomato plant.


Presence of berries won't noticably affect production. The berrys only get to be about the size of a big marble.

[TZ -OH6]

I have edited the information about the 30 minute bleach bath and added a bit more based on info I got when asking if the bleach and TSP could be mixed. [It can't because the TSP needs much longer to work on fresh seed.)

In short, do not use a 30 min bleach bath for fresh seed, only for old seed before planting. When processing fresh seed use a short (up to 5 min) bleach rinse.

The new stuff is in purple

I also added a link to a book at the end

[TZ -OH6]

PICTURES of micro-minitubers!!!


I went to toss out my spare-parts-plants and I found these runts that didn't get planted.

The plants are about 3 months old (started with the tomatoes) and obvioulsly were not taken care of since plant out. They were in 8 oz drink cups of potting mix.

Note the red and blue segregation from the All Blue seed.

I'll plant these minitubers as soon as the eyes pip, and hope for something before frost.



https://www.flickr.com/photos/51251503@N03/4735148435/in/photostream/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/51251503@N03/4735148437/in/photostream/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/51251503@N03/4735148439/in/photostream/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/51251503@N03/4735148441/in/photostream/

[garden5]

Man, I've wondered about potato seeds. Thanks a lot, TZ, for the great info. If there is ever a seed-starting forum, that should certainly be considered for a sticky.

[TZ -OH6]

Edited to included this very nice article by a home gardener on pollinating potatoes


https://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-breed-your-own-potatoes.html


and this additional detail from Tom Wagner on starting early to grow microtubers


Grow the seedlings to about 12 weeks, allow the soil to dry down a bit during the senescence, and allow the plant vine to totally die down for a few days to several weeks before harvesting the tiny tubers. It does not matter how small they are, I harvest tubers the size that can be laid out 8 to the inch and they will still grow a few months later.

The problem is with these tiny tubers is that they don't store as well as larger tubers and like any potato ...the tubers should not be harvested off of green plants....as they shrivel fast otherwise. Therefore the tubers harvested now (end of June) won't grow until Sept at the earliest becuse of dormancy issues, but at that time could be planted in 3 inch pots or smaller to grow another plant out, stunt it a bit and harvest the tubers say in December.






Because of formatting transfer problems it is easier for me to edit the big post here and then cut and paste it into a word document for my own reference file instead of the other way around. That is why I keep adding little bits and pieces as the new information comes in rather than waiting longer and doing big revisions.

[applestar]

My little potato seedlings are growing!!

These were grown from seeds in dried up potato berries I harvested last year -- All Blue or Adirondack Blue and Rose Gold was also in the bed though it flowered earlier so I don't know/think if there had been any cross pollination.

The plants are very hairy and I sort of see the resemblance to "potato leaf" tomatoes, but these leaves are much rounder. SOOO excited!

I haven't started yours TZ, but I'm still planning to so as to get baby spudkins out of them to plant next year.

[tomc]

Oh what a good post this is.

[DoubleDogFarm]

Applestar, Marlingardener, Cynthia, Roger please make this a Sticky.

Eric

[DoubleDogFarm]

Thank you

Eric

[Trisha]

thank you guys so much for all this incredible info, SO much to learn. Ive been thinking alot about growing potatoes, not finding great info out there.

the 'survivalist' in me always leads back to, if the $h!t really did hit the fan, could I fend for myself? growing your own veggies, yes, definitely the way to go, and your common greens, tomatoes, peppers are easy, but my god would you be hungry. I find myself repeating 'potatoes, carrots, corn' as if my stomach would somehow forget its shrinking.

I noticed that my store bought potatoes were I believe 'chitting' is the correct word for it. I read the word virus once and threw them all away. So I'm grateful to become less ignorant of all the facts. this knowledge is so excellent, even if only for the fact that I LOVE POTATOES... so thank you!

[applestar]

This year's TPS

left-most 4 soilblocks

right-most 3 soilblocks

image.jpg (54.01 KiB) Viewed 21703 times

...in total I actually have 11 soilblocks with three tiny seedlings per block for insurance.

[applestar]

They are so slow to grow! But I know from previous experience that once they reach a certain point, they'll bulk up into tomato like plants and grow shoots that are more familiar like those grown from spuds.

The soilblock with label was the only seeds saved from my patch of All Blue,
Adirondack Blue and Red Gold to sprout. All of the others are from DDF/Eric's
seeds derived from Tom Wagner's.

[Rairdog]

Lookin good! I really need to try TPS. Maybe next year in the new bed.

[Vanisle_BC]

Anyone trying TPS this year? (2016 ) Applestar how did yours work out in 2015? - oops, when was it?? I've been given some "purple potato" seed and my paper towel test says it's viable. I'd like to try growing some, a little later on. Not much though; I haven't much space. Tom Wagner says in his video that the seedlings will need full sunlight including UV (so no glass intervening.) That could be hard to come by here just when it's needed. I'm thinking bright fluorescents might be sufficient. I think they put out lots of UV.

[applestar]

I have to admit that last year's TPS growing didn't go so well. This is what happens when you try to juggle too many projects going on at the same time, AND run into trouble with one that you particularly placed a high priority on -- the others get left behind along the wayside....

I harvested a very very small number of mini tubers, then kind of forgot about them. I found they had sprouted during the winter -- some had dried up due to not being planted. I really should have planted the baby tubers in individual pots to grow egg-sized tubers to plant this spring. I only have a handful of the sprouted mini tubers left -- I'm trying to coax those into growing.

I also had some growing in a 3 gallon container, then forgot to harvest from it. I was trying to remember what happened to that particular container last fall after the freeze -- a bunch of stuff had been hurriedly dug up and potted to bring inside for overwintering just before the frost began. I was drawing a complete blank -- I may have dumped it out and used it to plant something else. I might have mixed the old potting mix (and the unharvested mini tubers) with fresh potting mix and planted with it... In that case, I might have potatoes starting to grow in one or more of the overwintering containers. I nut don't remember.

But it's really funny you should ask, because just today, I received a trade packet of some TPS from an enthusiast in Canada. So, yeah, I guess the answer is YES, I will be growing some TPs again this year. He recommended starting them about two weeks before starting tomatoes... Basically around same time as peppers.

They grow fine under fluorescent shop lights, and after sprouting and growing a couple sets of true leaves which take a little longer than tomatoes because TPS seedlings are so tiny, can grow in cooler conditions than tomatoes (40's to 50's).

[applestar]

This year's TPS. Lady Patrol was on duty this morning

image.jpeg (38.87 KiB) Viewed 21435 times

3/7 was uppotting date. These were started on 2/18 I believe.

[Vanisle_BC]

Update on progress of my TPS (donated seed of purple spuds.)
11 March - Started in soil blocks under fluorescents; ~75% germination.
25 April - Blocks into V. small pots & began "hardening off."
Mid May - Up to 4" pots outdoors. Amazed to see pea-size tubers already formed.

I'm now treating them like in-ground plants; building up pot soil level as they grow. Not sure what to do next; bigger pots or into the ground? Space is hard to find. I'll likely try growing most of then under mulch, (lawn clippings) which I've not tried before, and a couple in pots.

By the way there was a tiny - pea size - redskin potato in our spud basket, hosting an impudent sprout bigger than itself. Planted in a pot, just as an experiment, it's growing vigorously!

[BettaPonic]

Where can I get some TPS? I have been interested for a while in creating my own variety for a while.

[RadRob]

This is the only places I know of but if you join KPP in the Facebook link you'll find everybody grows TPS.

https://www.mariannasheirloomseeds.com/ ... seeds.html
https://www.cultivariable.com/
https://garden.lofthouse.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/316831657858/

[applestar]

Some of the more "wild" potatoes will set fruits after blooming -- many of the blue and red fleshed ones do. For fun, you could let these fruits mature, then harvest and process seeds like you do with tomatoes.

[RadRob]

TPS is getting more popular, I found another place selling seeds.
https://doublehelixfarms.com/true-potato-seed-TPS