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Post by 12540dumont on Jan 31, 2013 17:30:24 GMT -5
Okay, so here's the deal, normally in CA we plant potatoes in March or early September to overwinter. Most years they have not overwintered successfully, too much rain. Last year I did TPS. Naturally they were not ready to plant until almost May. So they were not ready to harvest until October. Then the rains came and I couldn't get them out of the field. Today, I went and poked at a 6 square inch of field and this is what I found. What do you think? Dig them up and replant them? As you can see the 65 degree daytime weather I'm having is making things that should be asleep sprout! This handful was half heaved out of the ground, this was taken on the back porch concrete. This is NOT my soil! Attachments:
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Post by 12540dumont on Jan 31, 2013 17:35:11 GMT -5
Last year Joseph sent me a beautiful lavender potato (only one), which I promptly put in a 5 gallon pot. I was going to dump it out today, as the cat believes this is her new nest spot and she's warming up the soil. And darn even these are re-sprouting. Joseph, I dug one of these up and it was half gold half lavender. So what to do? Leave it alone, dump it out and replant to the field Arghhh! Attachments:
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Post by raymondo on Jan 31, 2013 17:36:58 GMT -5
Let them do their thing. Looks like they're going to anyway so it might as well be where you want, rather than wherever.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 1, 2013 0:08:38 GMT -5
Holly: That is one of my favorite potatoes!!! It grew from a seedling. That lavender/yellow combination is so pleasant to me. If you like it plant a row of them. Your CSA would be thrilled. I harvested about 5 pounds of tubers this fall. It's one of the few non-fruitful potatoes I kept when I eliminated the non-fruiting potatoes from my garden.
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Post by DarJones on Feb 1, 2013 0:23:22 GMT -5
Just want to point out that high fruitfullness is negatively correlated with tuber production. In other words, a plant that produces several pounds of spuds will rarely produce fruit and vice versa. So selecting for plants that produce a lot of fruit could be bad news if you really want to get a lot of spuds.
Of course, most of the commercial potatoes are male sterile so I wholeheartedly agree with getting rid of them.
DarJones
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 1, 2013 1:33:57 GMT -5
My attitude is that high fruitfulness may be associated with high tuber production in some cases... At least in my garden, the plants that produce the most tubers also produce the most berries. Results might vary in other gardens with different climates and different genomes. (I select for both traits in the same plant.) I've planted plenty of potatoes that didn't produce neither berries nor fruits in my garden, but so far, I've never had a plant bearing a heavy seed load that was a piker with tubers. If I had to make up a reason why I often see high tuber production and high berry production in the same plant, it would be that a plant, that is healthy enough to grow great, has plenty of energy available to produce both tubers and berries.
One of my potato cultivars produces seeds during some growing seasons and fails to produce seeds in other seasons, depending on the weather, I suppose... In years that it fails to produce seeds, it also gives poor yields of tubers.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 1, 2013 2:19:52 GMT -5
And here is why I believe it...
A potato berry is conducting photosynthesis. I don't have the equipment or experience to measure the net gain or loss from a single berry, but potato seeds are very tiny!!! Yield of seeds on highly fruitful plants is somewhere around 1/3 to 1/6 ounce per plant, if the seeds from 4 potato berries were laid out flat, it would be about the same amount of material as contained in one square inch of thinly sliced potato peel.
A hill of potatoes might yield around 19 ounces of dried potatoes, which is around 100 times more weight than what ends up in the seeds. Sure the flowers have a cost to the plant, but it seems like a lower cost than growing a stolon for a tuber. So it seems to me that if there is a measurable difference in tuber yield, that it would be something measured in parts of a percent. Mega-ag has made dramatic improvements in yield by paying attention to all those parts of percents and adding them together. I don't have the patience or resources to do those kinds of observations in my garden.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Feb 1, 2013 4:03:29 GMT -5
Just want to point out that high fruitfullness is negatively correlated with tuber production. In other words, a plant that produces several pounds of spuds will rarely produce fruit and vice versa. So selecting for plants that produce a lot of fruit could be bad news if you really want to get a lot of spuds. Of course, most of the commercial potatoes are male sterile so I wholeheartedly agree with getting rid of them. DarJones Hi Darrell, I'm not doubting your statement here, just hoping you could cite where you read it? I'd like to get into some more in depth potato homework. There's a pretty decent ag library I have access to up at Cornell.
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Post by bunkie on Feb 1, 2013 11:11:16 GMT -5
holly, i'd plant those potatoes wherever you want! i've hd great luck with TPS that i started in small pots and forgotten about, only to find them in the spring, a year later in the greenhouse, ready to throw them out and discovered they were starting to sprout a second time...and with tiny fruits!
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Post by DarJones on Feb 1, 2013 19:02:00 GMT -5
Oxbow, direct observation, but you should be able to find something documented. It is a very obvious correlation. For example, I grew Azul Toro potatoes last year. None of the plants made fruit but all of them made heavy loads of spuds. I tossed out a dozen potatoes into a trash heap where they were just sitting on top of the ground. They were unable to form stolons therefore did not make potatoes. They bloomed heavily and set fruit.
You might ask this on Tom Wagner's forum, I know he has discussed it a few times.
DarJones
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Post by 12540dumont on Feb 1, 2013 19:38:47 GMT -5
Thanks all. If and when the tiller parts stop oogling and swilling and actually get here, I'm going to replant to new beds. I'm thinking there's at least 4 beds worth in one bed It'll be interesting with the TPS to see if they fruit or set. Me, I'm all for setting. I can't eat fruit.
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Post by littleminnie on Feb 13, 2013 20:42:17 GMT -5
Not that I have a high tunnel but lately I have been thinking how cool it would be here in MN to plant seed potatoes in fall in a high tunnel and then be first to market in spring. I believe they would overwinter well in the soil- probably better than in the basement. I don't think I could do it with a low tunnel though but maybe?
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Post by 12540dumont on Feb 14, 2013 17:25:42 GMT -5
Minnie, if you cover them with enough stuff till the frost is over, a low tunnel should work. We did it once, but it was full of aphids.
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Post by RpR on Mar 12, 2013 17:29:07 GMT -5
I planted my potatoes a month earlier than normal last year and did not like the result so this year they go in on May Day.
I just sent in my order to Potato Garden for:
Early Ohio Krantz Pink Pearl Sunrise Valisa
I may go to the local greenhouse or elevator and get some Kennebec or maybe one other.
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Post by atash on Mar 13, 2013 21:09:27 GMT -5
It seems reasonable that sterility should lead to more productivity, because seeds cost something to make.
There is also a counter-trend though: seedling potatoes tend to be vigorous until viruses start building up. Even certified seed potatoes have some viruses (some are downright disease-ridden) because they pick up viruses and sometimes other diseases as they're being grown out. It's not like they can sterilize the whole field.
In the final analysis it seems to wash out in terms of productivity. In terms of disease-management, seed is the winner.
Dar, if you get low yields on any Tom Wagner seedlings, it's probably day-length issues. A lot of them have recent tropical background and some of these start tuberizing late. It takes a while to select that out again, plus we don't necessarily notice since the ones with late-blight resistance, and in some cases frost resistant foliage, might not get harvested until late November anyway, by which time it seems to have a decent crop. One other problem I notice, that could be mistaken for low productivity, is when seedlings that have wild ancestry go and make really long stolens. Sometimes you find the potatoes quite far from the base of the plant. They don't all do that, but it's somewhat the luck o' the draw. It's more likely to be a problem with low-numbered generations from a primary cross to something wild or "primitive".
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