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Post by blueadzuki on May 22, 2012 18:33:50 GMT -5
Vodka is currently the easiest to obtain nearly pure ethanol. Joseph, you haven't tried Everclear??? It's 190 proof & odorless. I use it in perfume making. Or if you can't get that (some municipalaites ban it) try Devil Springs. That's only 160 proof, but that's probably adequate for sterilzation purposes (I use it to make extracts) |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 12, 2012 23:32:46 GMT -5
I started harvesting potato tubers today for planting next year... It was a bad year for potato blossoms in my garden. Yield of berries on Bountiful was about 20% of normal. Ella's which normally produces an abundance of berries produced only a few. Some of the landrace tubers are producing a few berries. They looks like kin to Bountiful and Ella's. Here's a photo demonstrating some of the diversity within the crop.  |
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Post by 12540dumont on Sept 13, 2012 22:02:13 GMT -5
Joseph, none of my TPS have berries. What have had berries have just fallen off.  However, those plants just keep blooming and blooming.... lots of little spuds below. |
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Post by diane on Sept 13, 2012 22:33:33 GMT -5
Mine all have berries but the plants are still green and still flowering prolifically.
I want to get some winter crops planted where they are, but they look as though they are going to go on forever.
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Post by diane on Sept 22, 2012 22:21:42 GMT -5
My potatoes, which were all transplanted into the garden in mid April, are still covered in flowers, plus berries. I am hoping to keep the seedballs with the tubers, but that is going to be difficult as the plants are intertwined, and they fall off very easily. Maybe I should put netting around them so they'll be close to their source branches. I discovered one plant that has died back - a Skagit Plenty. It has lots of berries but only a few tubers, and most of them are sending out white underground shoots. I'm not sure why this is happening - are they getting ready to grow new plants? Attachments:
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 23, 2012 0:23:33 GMT -5
It has lots of berries but only a few tubers, and most of them are sending out white underground shoots. I'm not sure why this is happening - are they getting ready to grow new plants? Good work! Might grow more shoots. Might grow more tubers. I'm loving all those berries. I usually dig the plant and any berries still attached go with the tubers. Any that are just laying on the ground go into a hodge-podge collection. You could write on the berries with a marker or scar them, so when they fall off you can match them up again. |
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Post by richardw on Sept 23, 2012 0:55:15 GMT -5
Ive started TPS from a Maori variety called Moie moie,ive grown it for 20 plus years but last season was the first time it set berries,so outa interest i'm giving it a go. These plants are nearly big enough to plant out soon  |
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Post by steev on Sept 23, 2012 22:00:46 GMT -5
circumspice, do you extract essences with a Soxhlet Extractor?
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Post by circumspice on Oct 11, 2012 9:04:34 GMT -5
circumspice, do you extract essences with a Soxhlet Extractor? No, I'm not that advanced. I don't have an extractor. I use good quality essential oils & some of the perfume oils I picked up in the Middle East. I do want to try to make my own essential oils. From what I've read, it is a fairly straightforward process to extract the oils with alcohol or carrier oils, without having to use expensive modern equipment. I think that long term, low tech processes are more natural. (not to mention cheaper!) ;D |
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Post by tatermater on Oct 15, 2012 1:30:13 GMT -5
I have yet to dig many of my seedling TPS lines but bringing one of my friends to help dig a few potatoes for sampling was fun. I will have lots of seed of sibling TPS seed of Helene 68...half sibs of African Prince and many many hybrid seed from Huagalina for next year. A.P. was a first year seedling two years ago...Helene 68 was a seedling last year and Huagalina is one of the classic Land Race varieties from South America. My friend who took these pictures really likes the flavor of Huagalina and African Prince. I ate a single potato of Yungay the other day and it was unusually good. Yungay is a cross out of Huagalina. And I will relist TPS of Yungay and Huagalina next year. AFRICAN PRINCE potato variety  HELENE 68 potato variety  HUAGALINA potato variety  |
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Post by raymondo on Oct 15, 2012 4:03:52 GMT -5
I like the markings on Huagalina.
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Post by bunkie on Oct 15, 2012 9:21:28 GMT -5
nice looking potatoes there tom!
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Post by circumspice on Oct 15, 2012 11:47:02 GMT -5
*sigh* The African Prince & Huagalina are beautiful taters. I may try them out when you have seed for sale.
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Post by 12540dumont on Oct 16, 2012 19:02:31 GMT -5
Even if you grow only one variety of potato in your garden (even if you grow only one vine) the "autotetraploidic" nature of the potato ... wow, this is really way over my head ... but basically XX + XY chromosomes divide and recombine in 16 different possibilities - therefore each seed of the potential 250 contained in the seed pod may be one of the 16 combinations. Now, there may be potato cultivars out there that are stabilized to the point that all 16 variations are very similar and impossible to tell apart and therefore all these tubers could be named as the mother (this may be the case for the Ukrainian cultivar Ilona).
But if you, like me, grow many cultivars and allow cross pollination, well you know the mother ... but likely will not be able to determine the father of your new cultivar. Each vine may develop very different tubers. One plant may produce tubers that you want to grow out (multiply with the traditional method of cloning tubers), make sure you NAME that tuber with a new name. This is from Curzio.com a real interesting read.
Atash, I hope you get those seeds up so that we can order by December for January planting!
Maybe on Friday I'll dig up the TPS.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 27, 2012 19:35:30 GMT -5
I sorted the potato berries today, and extracted the seeds from those that were ready. This year I have 2 gallons of berries to process, so I adopted a different strategy for extracting. My current method is:
Select berries that are ripe.
Measure 1 cup of berries into the blender.
Add 6 cups of water.
Blend for 30 seconds on Low/Medium.
Let sit temporarily while the seeds sink and the pulp floats.
Dump off the pulp retaining the seeds.
Fill the blender with water.
After the seeds settle, dump off the water and pulp.
Transfer the seeds to fermentation bottle.
Repeat with fresh berries.
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