Potatoes 2018

[RpR]

It is early but having checked the main tater sellers, I see some with the 2018 catalog out, have had some varieties sold out already, particularly the Peruvian Purple I was going to order.
Here is probably the types I will spend bucks to order because I have never had them before.

Dakota Pearl
AC Chaleur
White Giant

Now the Megachip I put in last year -- and I will probably have hold-overs-- down in the acidic black gumbo of my South garden gave me some of the very large potatoes I like for cooking with.
Gold Rush were/gave rather mediocre results.
I have ordered other types that are supposed to get large in the past but that has been a hit and miss item as to size, and I do space well apart so they have room to grow. I have also found that at least down there, planting deep gives best results.
In the North garden which, when I first put it in twenty years ago, gave me HUGE potatoes,-- although the type was the Luther Burbank white, not russet, which from what I read years ago was known for very large potatoes,-- no longer gives me as large of potatoes, even the same type, as those down South.
The garden shop I got the Burbank potatoes from is gone and they only had them for two years. Have not found any on-line and I look every year.
The North garden did the best in 2017 it has done in a long time so I will split the above types between gardens and compare.
I will have to find some Peruvian Purple because they are the best tasting potato I have ever grown.
I might put in some All Blue because checking I found out it is almost ten years since I put them in and of the blue ones they gave best yield and size.

[ferdzy]

Hey guys - I am still in the process of cleaning seed generally, and I have a little tub of berries from a potato which is either All Blue or Russian Blue. They went crazy on the berry production this year. I don't think we are going to have the space to grow these out ourselves. I am trying to decide if it is worth cleaning them. Is anyone interested in them? And by anyone, I suspect I mean Canadians because I understand sending potato seed internationally is fraught.

The only other potato in bloom at the time was Russet Burbank so it's fair to say they are essentially self fertilized. Russet Burbank is sterile except under certain very specific circumstances, usually achievable only in a greenhouse/lab. BUT I got ONE berry from the Russets!!! Needless to say, it is NOT up for grabs. If I don't grow it myself I will pass it on to a potato breeder I know.

[oxbowfarm]

I hear you on still having a bunch of berries kicking around. I had such an abundance of berries this year I had little takeout buckets full of them all over the house. We ended up with a nice infestation of fruit flies from a big batch that got stuck behind some stuff and forgotten. My wife was enraged by them, and blamed them on some produce my mother in law brought with her when she visited. I found the maggot/fly/berry bucket but I left my MIL with the blame. Fortunately my dear doesn't read HG.

[jocelyn]

Giggle, wife doesn't read this, eh? My hubby doesn't read it either. I hear you on the fruit flies. Ferdzy, I'm in Canada but I already have lots of Russian Blue/Russian Blue babies that made seeds. It seems that blue spuds happen even if the berry parent is not blue.....

[ferdzy]

Yeah, Edwin (Mr. Ferdzy) commented here for a while then decided he prefers to spend his down-time playing computer games and obsessing about the state of the world and rarely reads it any more.

And when I said "self fertilized" I meant to point out... these potatoes will be some shade of blue, almost certainly.

[billw]

From selfed All Blue, you will get a pretty even mix of blue/blue, blue/white, and white/white and possibly some pinks as well if you grow enough. Whether they are worth growing depends on how much you like the parent. It wasn't developed for eating (it was a marker potato) and most people think it has an inferior flavor. But, if you like it, then it is a good choice to work with. It is one of the easiest varieties to get seed from, so there probably isn't a ton of demand for it, but there are many people who don't live in the right kind of climate to get much flowering, so you can probably find someone who would be happy to have them.

Burbank isn't too hard to get berries from, but they will definitely be crossed. I haven't seen a speck of pollen from it. It also has an annoying tendency to set parthenocarpic berries.

[jocelyn]

Thanks for the genetic info, Bill. It does explain those blue seedlings from the yellow patch, grin. Bees sure do get around.

[RpR]

Last year was one of the few years I fertilized for potatoes, I usually only do that for surface crops.
Do any of you have a type or method of fertilization that has give fairly definite improvement.
One potato seller sells ACTON as his home made brew for potatoes, but I am a bit wary although selling potatoes is their business.

I put in my order for White Giant but the only person selling Dakota Pearl will not get new spuds for another two months and then they do not always get the same thing.

[paquebot]

For fertilizer, I till in ordinary compost plus a cup of potash per 10' of row. That's tilled in as deep as the Mantis will take it. Seed pieces pushed into that and then non-fertilized soil hoed over them to make a mounded row. One of the best harvests was when I dug a trench 8" deep and laid down 2" of fresh horse manure. 2" of soil on top of that and then the seed pieces on top of that. Not recommended unless you are certain that the developing tubers never come in contact with the manure.

Martin

[billw]

To decide what sort of fertilizer you need, first you need a soil test so you know what you have. The nutrient requirements of potatoes are well known, so it is really just a matter of closing the gaps. Short of that, any sort of compost will likely provide sufficient fertility for potatoes. I top dress with three inches of composted horse manure before a potato crop and then rotate through other crops, finishing with a fallowing under ryegrass.

[ferdzy]

Aaand looks like no-one is clamoring for those potato seeds, which suits me fine. Into the compost they go.

On the actual going-to-grow-them potato front, we have a few seedlings from Pink Fir Apple we are following. This will be their third year growing. They definitely tend to resemble mama but there is at least one that is a bit bigger and less knobby, with a lovely peach glow to the flesh. Not too prolific, though, so far.

[jocelyn]

We have some pink fir apple babies too. most are long and skinny, with yellow to yellow and pink flesh. like yours, not that prolific, but tasty. it's only a year or two in with those ones, so more time to play with them to see what they do before saying much more. Some seem to have sprouts already though, when others don't.

[billw]

Pink Fir Apple is a fun one. One of the few holdouts of the original Andean stock introduced to Europe. If you use it as the female in crosses, you maintain the Andean type cytoplasm. Unfortunately, like most andigena potatoes, it has little resistance to late blight.

[ferdzy]

Yes! Rebsie Fairholme mentioned Pink Fir Apple in her book on potato breeding as one she wanted to get seed from but couldn't, and I said, "Wot? Produces seed-balls semi-regularly here" and started saving seeds and growing it out. I'd like to get it crossed with German Butterball if I could ever get them to bloom at the same time, etc, etc.

[walt]

Tomato pollen stores well.  I'd expect potato pollen to store well also.