docfox
Newly Registered
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Joined: Sat Oct 19, 2013 6:35 pm
Location: Seattle area WA, USA

Selecting seed potatoes for next year

Hi there,
This year I grew purple potatoes, and I'm pretty thrilled with them. I was wondering about the selectivity. Would you get pretty much the same plant from any one of the potatoes, or is there value in selecting bigger, smaller, well formed, perfect shape, or some other quality?

billw
Cool Member
Posts: 67
Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2013 7:12 am
Location: WA
Contact: Website

Potato clones aren't particularly responsive to selection. There are some sports out there, so sometimes you get an interesting mutation, but there is generally not much variability to select against in a crop of potatoes. Tuber size is not important above a threshold of very small potatoes that may not grow plants as quickly in spring.

DoubleDogFarm
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 6113
Joined: Sun Mar 28, 2010 11:43 pm

James "jal_ut" here at Helpful Gardener keeps telling us that to many eyes gives you small potatoes. Too many eyes = too many stems = small tubers. He likes to cut tubers to two eyes per piece.

If you look at a tuber, there are more eyes on one end than the other. Usually


Eric

billw
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Posts: 67
Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2013 7:12 am
Location: WA
Contact: Website

True of most potatoes, although very late season potatoes may produce a large crop if you destroy the dominant eye to get a lot of stems. Early and mid season potatoes generally don't produce large enough vines to size up a really big crop of tubers.



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