Sweet Potato Breeding Project

[richardw]

Purple foods are the in thing at the moment.

Two more seedlings up today, now 10.

[reed]

I threw two purple ones away last year. One was all purple the other one was very cool, white with purple star pattern in cross section. They were not particularly seedy and they both had some kind of insect damage when no others did so they got dumped. When an all purple, seedy, not bug munched one shows up I'll keep it. Besides I figure if the thing about purple being good for you is true then the one ones with purple skin have plenty of it anyway as long as you don't throw out the peels.

Here are some that don't make the cut this year. Although they bloomed pretty good on a scale of 1 to 10 for seeds, they all rated less than 5. Not good enough to mess with for storing and cloning so they will be eaten.



A couple others that scored a little higher for seed were also discarded cause they made roots outside the pots they were planted in. A good discovery, I think. If the big roots form inside the small pot, I figure it is a sign they would also form close to the plant stem if grown in the ground (most do). If the big roots form below and away from the pots, growing off the feeder roots that exited the drain holes, then I figure it would be hard to find them if grown in the ground.

There are a of variables, like was my pot soil mix consistent, or was one more smothered by it's neighbors but I'm wondering if growing in the pots gives indication of potential productivity. For example compare the ones on far left and far right. 

If I didn't have better ones making seeds I would probably keep them all but the the project is moving way faster then I expected. So much so that I'm not worried about moving some other things higher up in the list of traits to select for. 

[add] almost forgot, yesterday I found three new seedlings. Pretty sure they are from this years seeds that got lost due to my negligence and the patch being way to overgrown. I also found lots of capsules that I didn't know were there and had already shattered. O'well guess I have to watch that area next year for volunteers. I'm definitely going to use trellises next year too.

[walt]

I'm going for trellises next year too.

[richardw]

So how high would trellises need to be?

[walt]

I'm thinking a 3 ft (1m) hog pannel would be a good height and affordable.  I forget if they come in 8 or 10 ft lengths.  10 I think.
Or if I can, I might get a roll of fencing and use it for sweet potatoes, beans, and Passiflora incarnata and its hybrids.  I got a job now, so such things are possible.  But now I lack time again.

[reed]

I'm thinking minimum of 5 ft. Of course you can run them horizontally once getting them up to easy height to work with but I will be growing 20 or so plants per row and not a lot of space to work with so they have to be pretty close together. I'm worried if they all went up say 3 feet and then started horizontal I would not be much better off than now, still a jumbled mess. So, I figure give them enough height to go five feet and let the ones that need it go that high and droop back down if they want. Some of course are bushy and wouldn't benefit much from trellis, but grown from seed you won't know what you got till they take off. Growth phenotype of the parent(s) is not a reliable indicator of the offspring.

They don't climb, like a bean but they don't damage easily if handled like tomatoes can. Nor do they get heavy like tomatoes so the trellis does not have to be robust. It's very easy to just twine them up and through, they droop back down the other side, just stick em through again.

[richardw]

Right, well that helps me plan how i will plant out, as you may have seen from past photos my beds are mounded, so i'll wack in a number of star pegs along middle, tie bamboo to them and then tie fence netting horizontally, might need two high if you reckon they can get that high.

Another seedling up today, 11 now

[walt]

My seedlings are all bushy.  None of the vines are more than 3 ft. long.  That is except for the new plant, which is viney, but still not much more than 3 ft.  And I am thinking of adding one or more next year.  But so far I think 3 ft. is good for mine for next year.  Later, I may need much bigger.  Time will tell.

[imgrimmer]

My seedlings make vines around 10ft. The trellie is about 6,5ft high now they grow downwards again.

[reed]

All the varieties I started with were either short 3 ft vines or even shorter and bushy. I thought it was happy coincidence that the bushy ones were seedy and even thought maybe the traits were related. Happy too cause in my little garden I like more dwarfish growth in things.

That's all out the window now cause in 3rd or 4th generation some vines have showed up that are easily 15 ft long. Testament to the diversity in the species I guess. Internode length is greatly increased and a flower stem grows at nearly every one. They only have two or three flowers per instead of six or eight but most all of them make nice seeds, many fewer fall off premature. As long as they are not running on the ground, under and mixed up with other plants the seeds are easy to find. I lost half or more of the seeds this year. They came from the plant that was first to sprout and first to make seed last year (a short 3 ft vine) and they were the first of both this year.

I'v decided I like the viney ones. Since the trellises don't have to be terribly strong it won't be hard to put some in and a vine going up a trellis might actually have a smaller garden footprint than a bushy one. So my careful study of Sandhill's lists, screening for those with bushy or small vine habit was a waste of time.

None of the new commercial clones this year are making any seeds but they did bloom a bit so maybe I still got some new genes in the overall mix. The new very pale green ornamental the woman has in her flower pots is making a few, but they are late, looks like I'll have to bring it in to finish up.

[walt]

With the wind here, I don't like to trellis plants, except grapes.   My tomatoes do best lying on the ground.  Sweet potatoes can too.  But for sweet potato seeds, I can't find them in the tangled mass of leaves, so trellis it is. 
But for root production, they will be on the ground.
And maypops also need trellises, to keep the fruit up away from what eats them.

[philagardener]

Sept 24, 2018 5:42:05 GMT -5 reed said:

As long as they are not running on the ground, under and mixed up with other plants the seeds are easy to find. I lost half or more of the seeds this year.

I now have had sweet potato seeds overwinter and germinate directly in the garden (and others have reported this too) so maybe just see what comes up in this bed on their own next year?  True seed, and self-planting too! All you have to do is dig and enjoy!

[farmermike]

I have all my sweet potatoes trellised this year. None of the seed grown plants are over 2 or 3 ft. Even the new clones from Sandhill are barely over 3ft in the ground with full sun. But the clones that are in big pots with only partial sun have grown to 8 ft or more.

I’m also really liking the couple of bush plants I have from reed’s “bushy bloomer” seeds. They are very manageable plants and may end up being the seediest too. In future seasons I may grow a separate plot of just bush sweet potatoes in order to minimize crossing with the vining ones. This year there was a lot of crossing, I’m sure.

[reed]

Sept 24, 2018 22:05:31 GMT -5 farmermike said:

 In future seasons I may grow a separate plot of just bush sweet potatoes in order to minimize crossing with the vining ones. This year there was a lot of crossing, I’m sure.

, good luck with that!

It might work if you only put clones in your bushy patch but seed grown plants just flat won't care.

[farmermike]

Sept 25, 2018 7:35:34 GMT -5 reed said:

Sept 24, 2018 22:05:31 GMT -5 farmermike said:

 In future seasons I may grow a separate plot of just bush sweet potatoes in order to minimize crossing with the vining ones. This year there was a lot of crossing, I’m sure.

, good luck with that!

It might work if you only put clones in your bushy patch but seed grown plants just flat won't care.

Haha! Well, the 6 of your bushy seeds that I planted this year all grew into bushy plants. Have you not seen the same result from that seed lot?

But yeah, I figure I could plant a patch of largely bush clones. I may plant some of their seeds in there too and just plan to cull any that start to vine. I imagine if they’re only getting pollinated by other bush plants, they should produce a high percentage of bush offspring. But my experience is still very limited!