Potato Onions and True Potato Onion Seed TPOS

[templeton]

Al,
All my GMtns developed bulbs after flowering, but probably not as large as they might have been. Some people think walking onions are a hybrid between fistulosum and cepa, so crosses may be possible.
Emasculating might be difficult, the flowers are quite small, and probably difficult to protect from random cross pollination. My walking onions rarely set seed - off the top of my head, I would look for seed from these, on the off chance that any seed was from a cross. Depends a bit on why the walkers dont set seed -if self incompatible, a cross is more likely, if it's a lack of fertile flowers, might be less likely. I must admit i havent had a close inspection of the flower structure.
t

[philagardener]

Agreed - any seed on walking onions (selfed or crossed) would be worth following up since that seems a rare event.

[Al]

Thanks for those thoughts. Good to know I might still get some bulbs. I did see a picture in Kelly's booklet of a flower formed from a dedicated outshoot starting below a bulb (as occurred on my Perutile onion), these Green Mountain flowers are emerging from the centre of the growing point like a conventional bolting onion. I will watch with interest & hope to see some division or new shoots around the main flower stalks.
I'll try & coax the walker into some seed setting, extreme de-bulbing if necessary to encourage flower formation & a good shower of neighbour's pollen.
It's a shame another salad onion on the plot is not ready to flower. Matrix is a vigorous cepa x fistulosum cross, I would be curious to see what a Green Mountain x Matrix mix would be like. A forest of mountainous walkers perhaps?

[eddiebuck]

My Green Mountains are beginning to flower as well as my brown potato onions from SESE. They are only twenty feet apart.I don't want a cross. Should I keep the seed pods clipped off of my brown potato onions to prevent pollinating my GMTN's?? thanks,eb

[philagardener]

Welcome, eddiebuck ! Vegetative propagation (multiplying the bulbs) is a great way to maintain the strains "pure" (or at least as pure as you received them), if you wish. If you let those varieties cross, you have a chance to mix things up a bit and uncover a bit of hybrid vigor. Could be interesting!

[templeton]

May 6, 2015 13:01:19 GMT -5 eddiebuck said:

My Green Mountains are beginning to flower as well as my brown potato onions from SESE. They are only twenty feet apart.I don't want a cross. Should I keep the seed pods clipped off of my brown potato onions to prevent pollinating my GMTN's?? thanks,eb

Hi Eddie,
If you don't want the varieties to cross, then yes, clipping the heads off the brown SESE onions will work - as long as there are no other onions around.
But a further question - why do you want to keep the Green Mountains 'pure'? They are heterozygous, meaning they won't breed true - seed-grown children of your green mountains won't be like the parent. If you want them to look like the parent, you need to reproduce them via bulbs, as Phila said. Letting them cross might introduce extra variety into the genetics, offering the chance of even more diversity in the Potato Onion world. I'd let 'em cross, myself, but you may have other objectives.
T

[templeton]

Here's some of my developing Green Mountain F2 seedlings. Not sure what to do with this lot.

another 100 or so planted outside in beds in a little hoop tunnel.

[eddiebuck]

Thanks guys. I really don't know that much about propagation as far as onions are concerned. I thought the Green Mountain bulbs would make Green Mountain seeds and bulbs,as long as no other onion pollen was introduced.When I received my GM blubs from Kelly,he also included some seeds.Are you saying the seeds were not GM ,just the bulbs?

[oldmobie]

May 6, 2015 20:42:30 GMT -5 eddiebuck said:

Thanks guys. I really don't know that much about propagation as far as onions are concerned. I thought the Green Mountain bulbs would make Green Mountain seeds and bulbs,as long as no other onion pollen was introduced.When I received my GM blubs from Kelly,he also included some seeds.Are you saying the seeds were not GM ,just the bulbs?

I think the idea is that bulbs are produced by division, with no outside genetic material introduced. Every bulb produced this way will be a clone of the mother plant. Seeds are produced sexually, with genes coming from the mother plant and genes coming from the pollen donor. Seeds won't be a clone of the mother plant, particularly if the pollen donor is a different variety. The result in that case would be a hybrid.

[philagardener]

As Kelly describes it, Green Mountain was selected as a clone (vegetatively propagated from one original specimen) from a large grow-out of seedlings that showed diverse phenotypes. It is not an inbred line (genetically, it contains a fair bit of diversity - in essence, it is a hybrid and will not breed true.) 

Kelly advocates mixing in new potato onion genes when plants bloom (which apparently happens very rarely for older varieties) to unlock diversity long tied up by vegetative propagation.  In my experience, I have seen a lot of variation when I have grown out his seed.  That is part of the fun of it!

[templeton]

To get a bit more technical, Green Mountain is heterozygous. For argument's sake, (and I'm making this up just as an illustration) let's say there is a gene for skin color in onions, that could be white or brown, and that white is dominant (I haven't done research into the genes so this is just speculation). Green Mountain is white, which means it has at least one copy of the white skin gene, but because it is dominant, it would suppress the brown gene if it was carrying it. So if Green Mountain has sex with itself, the offspring could carry the following mixes of genes
White/brown - which would look white,
brown/White - which would look white,
White /White, which would look white,
and brown/brown, which would look BROWN, since there is no white gene to suppress the brown skin gene.
Skin color seems to be more complex than this in reality, but I hope you get the idea.

Green Mountain is actually heterozygous for all sorts of characteristics in truth, so the offspring exhibit differences in vigor, color, bunchiness, flowering, flavor, and probably lots of other stuff that I haven't actually observed yet. That's what makes it so intriguing to grow out from seed. All sorts of characteristics emerge as the genes recombine in new combinations.
T

[Al]

Good explanation of heterozygous genes there, thanks. That variability is why I was so glad to get some of Kelly's bulbs, these have been selected as the best of a seed grown batch & clonal division of these will give known desirable strains.
I was also pleased to get seed, it might produce good things too but there will be variations. I have 5 types of potato onions from different sources all about to flower. Plus some other Alliums, I think I'll just coop the whole lot up together & encourage pollination, then see what the seed produces next year. But also plant bulbs of strains like Green Mountain which are known good performers.

[steev]

Having gotten GM seeds from T, I only regret that my current drought conditions restrict my planting these out willy-nilly; this is not to say that I haven't a lot growing on for eventual planting-out; excellent germination!

My success with various onions and leeks last year (those I didn't eat are coming into bloom), has led me to seed more varieties this year; I expect good harvest from this year's plantings and potentially interesting crosses from last year's. It's looking obvious that I need to stop screwing around, and segregate things for various purposes. So much for "adolescence"; time to mature, I guess.

[templeton]

I just cast my eye over my bags of GM F2 spud onions hanging in the carport. They all seem to have good storage characteristics.

Glad that seed worked for you, Steev.
T

[templeton]

May 7, 2015 0:55:36 GMT -5 Al said:

I have 5 types of potato onions from different sources all about to flower. Plus some other Alliums, I think I'll just coop the whole lot up together & encourage pollination, then see what the seed produces next year. But also plant bulbs of strains like Green Mountain which are known good performers.

Go for it! Hope they all cross up.
T