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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 23, 2018 19:42:31 GMT -5
You could probably pick a flowering vine, put it in water and bring it in if frost threatens. That might get you a few more seeds for next year. Most of the seeds I harvested last year were done in that manner. I dug the plants a few days before frost. Stuffed any plants with immature seed pods into a bucket of water. Forgot about them in the greenhouse. Remembered them once in a while, and picked seed pods. My sweet potato seeds were started in coconut coir. Heated to 85 F for 16 hours per day. Cooling to 65 F at night. Under florescent lighting. I have already collected 5 seeds. (Technically 6, but the last one had such a thin shell that it disintegrated during threshing.) |
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Post by richardw on Aug 23, 2018 21:57:19 GMT -5
Got the seed home again, now about run out to the tunnelhouse and sow, i'm not quite set up like you are Joseph so i'll go with reed's idea, dont normally have problems sowing seed the way i do. The daytime indoor temps are getting up in the mid 20C so it should be warm enough.
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Post by richardw on Aug 23, 2018 22:58:20 GMT -5
All sown, one seed per pot, 53 seeds in total, now grow ya little buggers
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Post by reed on Aug 24, 2018 4:38:47 GMT -5
richardw, I think Joseph's method forces sprouting of a larger % in a short time. Like that you will likely see a few sprout in a few days and then some stragglers over the next couple weeks. But, ones you might think must have rotted will keep surprising you for weeks on. I discard the rest on the ground after I have enough to fill my planting area, but then the discarded ones keep popping up even after completely drying out one or more times. They are very erratic.
Once they have a true leaf or two or even before, they are extremely forgiving and easy to transplant. toomanyirons, they are also forgiving later on. You can dig plants, remove the big roots and replant the vine in a pot and take inside, the seeds will finish maturing. You can also just clip stems with flowers or buds and stick them in water and seeds will mature. If you put them in small pots instead of water they will live till planting time next year.
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Post by richardw on Aug 24, 2018 14:39:05 GMT -5
I took three cutting off a red fleshed clone last autumn, these will go out in about two month which by then they will be a large plant. Such a major downfall with these NZ Kumara clones being a long season strain. I'll be kicking these out the door when i found a better short season replacement  |
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Post by reed on Aug 24, 2018 20:36:08 GMT -5
toomanyirons , getting some new genes into my mix is a priority. if you could recreate the happy accident that resulted in the volunteers you had a couple years ago that would be really sweet. I have ordered slips from Sandhill and always arrived fine. Some of the parent varieties of my seeds came from there. This year the ones I wanted were out of stock but plan to try again next year. Actually I thought about writing him to see if I could make some kind of arrangement for just a couple each of several kinds. I can't justify paying full price for several kinds especially since they generally come in bundles of six or so and I only want two, actually just one, the other is for "just in case". The new clones I'm trying to force into bloom this year are from local sources and one is almost certainly Beauregard, the other one might also be. As far as seed life, research I'v done indicates they are very long lived, several years at least in storage, decades in refrigeration. richardw , early maturity was a major consideration in the ones I got from Sandhill before and those genes are in your seeds. I'm assuming their designation of early means early to make large roots. I don't think there is really such a thing as a "mature vs immature" root, it's not like the have to get ripe or something. I'v already seen the size of the root makes little difference in how they taste or how well and long they keep. I'm guessing the early, mid or late just means how long it takes to make a big root.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 24, 2018 22:45:41 GMT -5
I took slips from the two seediest sweet potatoes and brought them inside today. Our first fall frost is typically the first clear night after the first rainstorm in September, so that's coming right up. Can't predict the future, so I figured that I might as well be preemptive.
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Post by farmermike on Aug 25, 2018 12:17:49 GMT -5
3 of the purple fleshed varieties I ordered from Sandhill are blooming now: Nam Hai, Purple Delight, and Dingess Purple. Unlike the best seed grown plants, which began blooming when the were still small, these heirlooms needed to climb a bit before flowering (or maybe it was daylength related). This is Nam Hai, blooming profusely, and has a few seed pods developing nicely. Those are surely crossed with the seed grown plants. These flowers are a little larger than the plants from reed’s seeds. Hopefully I’ll get enough of these seeds to share around.  Interestingly, only certain plants from each clone are blooming, instead of being uniform as I would have expected. |
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Post by imgrimmer on Aug 25, 2018 13:14:58 GMT -5
getting some new genes into my mix is a priority. had sweetpotatoes. might be interesting due to the cooler summer climate there. They came from a Georgia Jet strain originally from Mapple Farm. |
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Post by walt on Aug 26, 2018 15:04:01 GMT -5
I heard people talking about sweet potato varieties as bakers, pie type, and salad type. I didn't interupt and ask what was meant as a salad type sweet potato, and I still don't know. If I by chance came up with a salad type, would I know it? Or would I throw it out as worthless? I wonder if "salad type" was meant to imply that the leaves are eaten, rather than the tubers? You were right Joesph. Today I was driving past a neighbor's garden and stopped to talk with the women who were harvesting sweet potato vines. I sometimes stop and talk with the gardeners there, and I always admire their garden when I go past. So today I asked about the vines they were harvesting and, yes, they were for salad. Of the couple who live there, the woman is from Korea. Judging from the couple's age, I think she was one of the war brides. The couple had a lovely garden every year, and sold vegetables to Korea-American families in Kansas City, 200 miles away. The garden is much smaller now, as the man had a stroke about 2 years ago. He can still talk about gardens, but I don't think he has been out of the house since. Makes me think about how my gardening days are numbered. I likely have years to go, but fewer than I used to have. So, they gave me one of the sweet potato vines. It was already rooting at the nodes. And it was in bloom. I pollinated mine with it when I got home, and I'll continue to make crosses both directions. They gave me a Korean honeydew, too. I'll be giving them a potted chiltipine. I would I think I got the best of the deal, but really it was an exchange of gifts given without thought of trade. |
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Post by reed on Aug 27, 2018 7:52:42 GMT -5
I'm not sure I buy the notion of the different types except maybe as relates to how different cultures use them. On the other hand a person could assign all kinds of different designations for all the different phenotypes that show up. I imagine however that all the differences that are showing up in mine already exist in for example in Sandhill's collection, let alone in the actual total. There is a difference in flavor of the leaves but I'm not gonna try to describe flavor. I'd say it is generally but not always related to color. There are other differences that I can't see or taste but I know exist because Japanese beetles love some and don't touch others. There is lots of difference in the taste and texture of the roots. Taste is mostly just varying in sweetness. Some roots are stringy, some are kinda pithy, like the have tiny air pockets or something and feel spongy on your teeth. I don't like either of those. Others are nice and solid and crisp, I like them. Some of course make nice big roots and some little stringy ones. Making seeds is still priority but so far I have two from last year that I want to go on keeping as new cloned varieties. One has big orange sweet roots and the other purple skinned white roots. Both fortunately are also good seeders. I'm watching two new plants in particular this year in hopes of adding at least one new one to the collection, won't be long till I can examine the roots and see it they make the cut. I'm not keeping good seeders on that trait alone. I have their seeds and I'm sure they pollinated others so no need to worry over cloning them anymore. walt & farmermike , great to hear your getting new genetics mixed in. |
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Post by richardw on Aug 31, 2018 17:56:57 GMT -5
Great news, one seedling is starting to poke through.
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Post by richardw on Sept 1, 2018 15:06:34 GMT -5
Two more showing and the first seedling with its first leaves  |
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Post by reed on Sept 2, 2018 5:09:47 GMT -5
I needed to the thin the patch some more to help locate the seeds so I culled a couple more plants that were taking up a lot of space but not blooming a lot. One of them was a very pretty plant with big heart shaped purple leaves. It had two big roots with light pink skin, a yellow ring inside and a dark orange center. I ate smaller of the roots and it had a nice sweet flavor even without curing. I feel kinda bad but this particular variety will go extinct when I eat the bigger root sometime this winter but I don't know what else to do with the ones that seem perfectly good other than not being seedy. Also, I not totally sure, but I think it is the first one I'v had with purple leaves that did not also have purple skin roots.
The diversity in the plants is amazing, none of the parent varieties had roots that looked like that one. I'm seeing similar things in other traits too as well as some that look identical to the original ancestors. I wonder if more variety is showing up cause of moving into the F3 or F4 generations.
I'm getting anxious to see what kind of roots the good seeders have but will hold off finding out till closer to frost. Although, last year I discovered you can dump them out of their pots, remove the big roots and replant and the seeds finish up just fine.
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Post by richardw on Sept 2, 2018 14:06:36 GMT -5
I wonder if that diversity remains when you get up past F8-9, one would think it should stabilize out if new genetics was not added.
Total now of 9 germinating seeds
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