TPS True Potato Seeds

[applestar]

I hope I'll be able to save my seed potatoes until next spring....

-- latest update:

[TZ -OH6]

I wasn't going to plant TPS any this year, but this thread got me excited. The big surprise was that I had a few seeds sprouting after 3-4 days, right with the first tomato sprouts coming up. TPS is usually reluctant to germinate quickly, especially when it is only a year or two old. It gets better with age.

[jal_ut]

My son has been playing with TPS for several years and I see many of you are having fun with it. Yet, I have to ask.............

"What's the Point?"

I don't get it. My reason for growing potatoes is to gain some good food to feed my family. To get enough to be worth the garden space one needs to go to vegetative reproduction, plant a nice sized set and water/fertilize properly. Then you can get some food for the family!
(and it will be of predictable quality)

[applestar]

Speaking for myself, the reason I'm trying to grow potatoes from true seeds is

(1) To see if I can/to learn how. I still haven't got the hang of it from seed to eating size harvest yet, so I'll try again. (I'm trying to grow onions from seeds and corn from seeds for the same reason -- corn may seem pretty basic, but it's harder with limited open space)
(2) I suspect your son is doing this too, but I believe there is a drive to achieve TPS that can be grown to full size harvest in one season. I don't expect to achieve this myself, but I intend to be ready when those variety seeds become more widely available.
(3) Seeds are less troublesome to trade than seed potato tubers. And there are some really interesting varieties out there. I haven't gone out of my way to trade for them or buy them yet because...well...we're back to reason (1).

There are higher cause reasons like preserving the genetic diversity, etc. but I'll leave those to the experts.

The biggest two are definitely ready to be planted, but I'm waiting for the seed potatoes I planted to start to grow as general guide to appropriate ground temp.

[jal_ut]

I plant onion seed every year. The harvest is lots of scallions. Certainly a good return for a handful of seed. If let to go for dry bulbs, you get bulbs the size of ping pong balls and smaller. Pounds of dry bulbs per row of production is quite low compared to what you will get if you plant onion plants or sets.

TPS that can be grown to full size in one season? Haven't seen any yet. Good luck.



Here is what you might expect from TPS.

[jal_ut]

Here is what you might expect if you plant onion seeds directly in your garden.

Corn is always planted directly in the garden where it will grow. Plant on the day of your last average frost in Spring, or up to a month after that date.

[TZ -OH6]

There is going to be global political and social breakdown within the next decade -- as soon as the ice cap melts and all the polar bears are forced south into Ohio. Bankruptcy of Hostess Co. and the death of the immortal Twinkie have signalled the beginning. I think that I can develop a Twinkee-like tuber from TPS that will resist late blight and early polar bears without Monsanto finding out and suing me. (I think I covered all the doomsday buzzwords there without being offensive or getting flagged by the FBI terror watch bots.)

I grow houseplants, and a big cactus that is not only useless but dangerous too.

I have had TPS plants reach the same size as seed tuber plants, but my seed tuber plants were pretty pitiful.


If I were practical I would eat the acorns, deer, racoons, squirrels, cats, dogs, rabbits, groundhogs, possums, dandelions, stinging nettles, burdock, violets, plantain, and purslane that occur in and around my garden, but I'm in city limits so some of those things are illegal to kill and consume for my economic betterment. The rest taste bad, are too hard to fix, or were banned from the house after I tried to get someone else to eat them.

[applestar]

LOL Whenever I offered my Dad some of my tomato seedlings and asked which color fruit or what kind of flavor he wanted, he would say, "I'm growing them for food, not for fun."

[jal_ut]

I hope I'll be able to save my seed potatoes until next spring....

Saving potato tubers till next spring? Here is what I do. Out in the yard I dig a hole two feet deep and big as required for what I want to store in it. Put in the veggies and cover them up with the soil I took out. Mulch with some leaves.

Things keep really well like this. Potatoes, carrots, beets all do well.

[applestar]

I have an idea -- my dad grows Japanese wild potatoes and stores his tubers in holes like that. He has a sandy garden on a slope perfect for pit storing, unlike my garden which hits compacted clay 12-18" down even in my best and longest worked bed. Maybe he'll let me store some of my seed potatoes in his pit.

I still haven't planted them (patchy frost warning tonight )

Biggest two are starting to form flower buds (they grow almost exactly like tomatoes -- the biggest of those are forming flower buds too)


How many days after planting seed potatoes do the shoots usually start to break ground? I was going to plant these when my seed potatoes broke ground, but they are not showing up yet.

[DoubleDogFarm]

Bump

[DoubleDogFarm]

Sept 19 2013.

Just showing off how large some of the TPS fruit can get. I"m not sure, but I believe they are do to the Voles eating the tubers below.



Eric

[mhannum]

Interesting photos of the flowers and the seeds - cool!

[DoubleDogFarm]

I have an idea -- my dad grows Japanese wild potatoes and stores his tubers in holes like that. He has a sandy garden on a slope perfect for pit storing, unlike my garden which hits compacted clay 12-18" down even in my best and longest worked bed. Maybe he'll let me store some of my seed potatoes in his pit.

I still haven't planted them (patchy frost warning tonight )

Biggest two are starting to form flower buds (they grow almost exactly like tomatoes -- the biggest of those are forming flower buds too)


How many days after planting seed potatoes do the shoots usually start to break ground? I was going to plant these when my seed potatoes broke ground, but they are not showing up yet.

Apple, How about an update. Nothing reported since late April

Eric

[billw]

TPS that can be grown to full size in one season? Haven't seen any yet. Good luck.

It is certainly possible to grow TPS to full size in a season, or if not full size, at least a competitive yield to tuber-grown potatoes.

This mostly depends on the length of your season and how soon you start your TPS. Obviously, if you start the TPS at the same time that you plant tubers, the tubers have a huge head start.

Here is a TPS potato we grew this year that yielded 4.5 pounds. Notably, this plant was harvested early - it had not yet reached senescence, so the yield could have been better.



Of course, this is not a typical result and potatoes from TPS do generally perform better the following year when grown from the tubers.

A more typical result (0.6 pounds):

[rainbowgardener]

Here is what you might expect if you plant onion seeds directly in your garden.

Corn is always planted directly in the garden where it will grow. Plant on the day of your last average frost in Spring, or up to a month after that date.

Thanks, james! Once again you helped me understand and quit blaming myself! I always wondered why I didn't get nice big onions. It's because I grow them from seed. Actually I get bigger onions than those, but that's because right now I am harvesting the last of last year's onions from seed and then planting more seed. So they stay in the ground from 9 to 12 months. And still they don't get nice big bulbs like the ones you grow.

Onion sets are just so expensive and tend to come in bunches of more than I can use. Onion seed is super cheap!

[DoubleDogFarm]

The topic is potatoes

Here is what you might expect if you plant onion seeds directly in your garden.

Directly in your garden is to be noted. If you start your seeds in the house Rainbow, you will get full size onions. Check out my Copra onion posts.

Eric

[jal_ut]

Onion sets are just so expensive and tend to come in bunches of more than I can use. Onion seed is super cheap!

Yep.

You can start the onions from seed in the house and have them up as big as matchsticks by early spring when you can get on your soil. Then plant them out.

Onions are day length sensitive and bulb when the days are of the right length. In the North plant long day onions, and in the South plant short day onions. This is important! Get the right variety.

You want to get them to good size with lots of leaf when the days are long enough to bulb so they have the vigor to make that big bulb you crave. If they are just small when the days are long enough, they bulb, but the bulbs will be small.

When I grow onions from seed and let them go to bulbs, they end up about the size of golf balls, or less.

Sorry, how did we go from potatoes to onions? Gettin back on topic.