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Post by walt on Oct 18, 2017 13:54:47 GMT -5
Was going past my wife's 20 gallon pots with mixed scarlet ruuner beans, coleus, and sweet potatoes. The scarlet runners ar dead, or dormant, the coleus have lost a lot of leaves, and the sweet potatoes have lost some leaves. So I noticed clusters of dried pods on the sweet potatoes. I have looked for seeds on the sweet potatoes all summer and found none, but I looked again as I could see the clusters more easily. Behold! Seeds! About 15 of them. I suppose they are selfs. The nearest blooming sweet potatoes were 3 blocks away. These are from the black ornamental sweet potatoes Reed has mentioned. I think I bought them under a different name, but the description has been the same.
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Post by reed on Oct 18, 2017 19:42:02 GMT -5
That's how it starts, a few surprise seeds from a woman's flower pot. Next thing you know, down the rabbit hole.
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Post by ottawagardener on Nov 5, 2017 15:33:39 GMT -5
I grew out seedlings here. Technical question. Is there a way of uploading pictures on here that doesn't involve me needing a photo bucket etc... account?
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Post by reed on Nov 5, 2017 17:32:03 GMT -5
I think the built in photo host is full so you do have to use something else. I switched to flickr and like it a LOT better than photo bucket. I don't use it's (flickr) share feature, I just open the image full size inside flickr and right click - copy image address. Then paste into the insert image here. It works pretty good. Just make sure your image you upload to flicker is minimum of 1250 px wide.
Anxiously awaiting details and pictures of your TSPS work. Did your seedlings make nice sized roots? Did you get seed from seed? It is so warm here that mine I'm keeping as house plants wanted to go outside today, so they are enjoying the breeze out on the picnic table.
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Post by ottawagardener on Nov 6, 2017 7:18:10 GMT -5
Yes and yes. I got some nice sized tubers and I got seed from seedlings!! I should set up flicker then.
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Post by reed on Nov 6, 2017 8:30:23 GMT -5
What about stem thickness? I found an old paper from University of Hawaii where they didn't like plants that had thick stems at the base. I would never thought to consider that had I not seen that paper but did indeed notice a variety. Both of my plants with other than purple skin roots had thinner stems. My very bushy plants, which I favor for my small garden mostly had thicker stems.
Hawaii is a lot different climate than ours so whatever their reason for considering that undesirable may not apply anyway, besides they didn't really elaborate on why.
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Post by reed on Dec 9, 2017 7:22:24 GMT -5
My house plant sweet potatoes are doing very well, they were too crowded in the little cell pack so I up potted to large drinking cups. They have finally stopped blooming, I suspect cause they get some pretty chilly night time temps by the drafty window. Color has also become less intense on the purple ones. Harvested 5 seeds yesterday, the last for 2017 but confirmed self pollination of two plants.
Since they are sitting there beside the kitchen table it was easy to very closely watch the flowers. Interesting to see how they open at slightly different time from plant to plant. Also they shed pollen at different times. For example one may have visible pollen as soon as the flower opens and another may take a couple hours before any pollen is visible. I also think there is a window of time after which it is no longer available, check - no pollen, an hour later- lots of pollen, another hour later, no pollen. I suppose this also varies from plant to plant.
Some that I thought previously might be male sterile are not, I just hadn't checked at the right time. Have no idea when one becomes receptive to pollen or how long it stays that way but from research that is also variable. I think the varied timing between plants is at least partly responsible for the apparent incompatibles between different ones. The self incompatibility is at least partly due to the structure of the flower, gravity it's self works against self pollination in the absence of insects or some other means of moving the pollen around.
I'm not saying the university people whose research I'v read are wrong, just that it hasn't been difficult to stumble on some proverbial proof of the rules.
Also got out my stored roots and they all look fine, a little bit of early sprouts on the thin parts on the ends. I'm wondering if maybe I should have trimmed those off. O'well there isn't any shriveling or rot on the big parts so I won't worry about it.
Those that didn't make the cut to keep as clones but had similar sized and colored roots, unfortunately are not very sweet. That might be ok as they are pretty good treated more like a regular potato, sauteed with onions or garlic. Haven't tried them mashed yet. I only have roots from one seed grown plant that has orange roots which is more in keeping with what I always thought a sweet potato is supposed to be and they are nicely sweet. Although it didn't make a lot of seeds it was the first to make them. I'll try to increase the orange root genes this coming year.
*To those that got a mixed pack of seeds this year - a high percentage is from the now confirmed, self-compatible strains.
sorry - roots and clones are not for sale or trade
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Post by farmermike on Dec 21, 2017 23:48:51 GMT -5
Well, I had a small amount of unexpected success with TSPS this year. Last year I received ~25 seeds from reed in a trade. In early spring I planted only 4 seeds as a test. (I had never grown a sweet potato in my life until 2017, and I didn't want to waste too many precious seeds.) I waited and waited, and nothing came up, and I kinda forgot about them. Then, in early July, I noticed these 2 seedlings pop up in a flat of languishing pepper seedlings (I had run out of garden space at that point.) Apparently, I had gotten mixed up and double-planted those cells. Oops! Oh well, not the first time that's happened. But I was pretty excited to find them and planted them up into a big pot along with slips I grew from grocery store tubers. I dug the tubers a few weeks ago, just before frost killed the vines. I stuck the vines from the seed-grown plant in water to try to keep them through until next spring. One plant had 2 seed pods! I just opened those dried pods. The smaller one had 2 seeds that don't look promising; the larger pod had 2 seeds that look pretty viable to me. These seed-grown plants, and the slip-grown, all had many flowers during summer, but only the one plant produced any pods. I think part of the problem was that I didn't give them anything to climb on, and all the vines just trailed down around the big pot they grew in. They were crowded by other potted plants, and somewhat hidden from sunlight and probably from pollinators. In any case, I'm hooked on growing sweet potatoes, and will give this project a lot more attention and garden space next year. I have a warm climate and a very long growing season, so I think I should be able to get good seed production here.
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Post by reed on Dec 22, 2017 6:29:30 GMT -5
farmermike Hey! glad to hear it. Not surprised you discovered them long after planting, some take a long time to sprout. I had some volunteers and then very late in summer discovered more recently sprouted volunteers. I suppose I could be losing out on some good stuff but I want to focus on those that sprout faster, easier and more predictably. No acids or much of anything else used here. Did the one that made seeds make a good sized root? If so what color was it? Most seed grown have made roots with purple skin and white flesh, leaves on your's look typical of that. I only have one that is orange / orange. It didn't make a lot of seeds but it was the first to make them. Planted as a seed in mid April it made mature seeds before end of July and made the big orange roots. That seed capsule in your picture looks perfect, I bet it made a nice little crunch sound when your harvested it's seeds. Plants that I am keeping as clones are still doing good planted in plastic drinking cups and are still blooming sporadically. I harvested five more seeds just a few days ago. I'v been meaning to get with you over on the seed trade thread but was waiting till I had all my other trades sent out before starting any more. I'm also hooked on sweet potatoes. In my experience so far they are pretty easy to grow and I can't think of a better survival food. If you hit on some you really like you can just keep cloning it like traditionally done with sweet potatoes but also keep growing new ones and stockpiling seeds in case you had to start over. I have better luck producing TSPS than TPS.
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Post by philagardener on Dec 22, 2017 8:03:54 GMT -5
Last year I collected some seed from a purple ornamental cultivar I came across that happened to be blooming. Planted seed indoors early this past spring and got several seedlings showing variety in leaf shape and degree of purple coloration. Planted in the garden, the seedlings didn't seem to have much vigor and ended the season without making any roots. Standard varieties grown from slips all did fine. Guess that's just the genetic lottery. I did collect more seed this year from what I believe is the same ornamental variety (looks like one named "Blackie"); it was blooming quite profusely and seems to be self-fertile since it was relatively isolated (apart from a pale green leaved ornamental variety nearby that did not appear to have any flowers) yet set a fair number of seed capsules.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Dec 22, 2017 9:55:05 GMT -5
I don't have anything to contribute to this thread but i just wanted to give a BIG thank you to whoever is working on this. It gives hope to me that someday i can grow sweet potatoes here reliably and from TSPS no less too!
Keep up the good work!
Question though, would it be possible to grow slips hydroponically to induce flowering to set seed indoors?
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Post by gilbert on Dec 22, 2017 13:16:12 GMT -5
I just ran across something interesting; to promote flowering, sweet potatoes can be grafted onto other species, including I. aquatica.
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Post by reed on Dec 23, 2017 4:40:27 GMT -5
Couple seasons ago I had a large vine grown in water outside to bloom profusely but it did not set seed. It also did not make any large storage roots. I'm sure the lack of storage roots was due to growing in water but don't know if that was the reason for the blooms or if it was because it also grew in considerable shade. Lack of seeds I suppose was due to lack of another flowering variety near by.
As far as growing inside I think it might be possible to actually mature roots if you have a large enough south window or green house, no idea if hydroponics would induce flowers though.
In my research I came across several general practices to induce flowering but one paper which made a lot of sense to me discouraged it for the most part. If you are after a particular cross for particular reasons and intend after that to propagate asexually then it is fine to induce flowering. But if you want to restore sexual reproduction to the crop inducing flowering can be counter productive, carrying genetics for non-flowering into the next generation.
On the other hand maybe by inducing flowers and crossing to one that flowers a lot would do the opposite. I'll probably try that eventually but for now I just want to increase the number of easily flowering varieties in my collection. Especially my own seed grown ones.
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Post by reed on Jan 14, 2018 11:50:54 GMT -5
Thought I'd do a little update on my sweet potatoes. All the ones I'm keeping as houseplants are looking pretty good. I just trim off older leaves as start to fade and they are still growing although very slowly. Blooming has finally stopped, the last several flowers have dried up without dropping off and recently formed buds dry up before reaching flowering size. It gets a little colder than they probably like there on the window sill. Most are still making buds though for what ever that means in relation to day length sensitivity. Here is what they looked like this morning. One has a special talent. Every morning it makes these tiny droplets of super sweet goo at the base of it's leaves. Just this one does it. I would say it is as sweet as sugar, that is if sugar was anywhere near this sweet. Wonder if it could be possible to breed for that trait. Develop a strain that makes lots of it and find a way to extract it in quantity. I doubt that would be easy but wow a person wouldn't need anything else sweet and a sufficient quantity would not have to be large.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 14, 2018 12:28:12 GMT -5
Sounds like functioning extrafloral nectaries to me. I have a cowpea that has them, on a sunny day it sounds like a swarm of bees, but its all the wasps drinking at the nectaries and fighting for a spot.
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