When can TPS be transplanted outside? Around the last frost date? Can it be before then?
The seedlings are quite tender. I would definitely say after frost. If you want to do frost testing I’d grow out your own bulk TPS to do it.
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I Got a GTS TPS email. Nice work Julia.
I planted out last year’s remnant TPS selected tubers a week or two back in my active worm bed - covered w more rabbit bedding and some compost as cover. It has been very very cool here and very very few nights over the past month didn’t hard freeze let alone stay above the light frost baseline. These tubers may simply be eaten by the bed itself or killed entirely BUT it’s too early
to tell. Until I see any greenery above surface level they will remain entirely unprotected from
the elements. In the meantime, the GTS TPS seeds are beginning to germinate:
Last year’s TPS tuber plantings are beginning to rear their faces. They appear to have brushed off recent frosts so I am continuing to leave them unprotected - this will change if I sense any upcoming hard frosts (nearly inevitable).
Meanwhile, in the slowly churning lean-to greenhouse the TPS seedlings join in the slow dance:
Which brings me to:
@julia.dakin : Do you have any advice for us wandering souls as to best promote berry production and actual seed production? OR, can you point me in the proper direction. I’m sure you’ve shared this already but I have had my head and meandering works elsewhere. I’m sure Cultivariable has plenty of literature on this very topic. Perhaps I’m just being morning lazy. LOL.
This Sunday bring your TPS questions to an expert! I scheduled a zoom because a friend was telling me about a friend of hers, passionate TPS grower, with some intriguing techniques that I hadn’t heard of. So I reached out and he agreed to come on a zoom talk to all of us. Has been growing from TPS for about 10 years, very knowledgeable. Register here
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Awesome. Signed up and donated. Here to Support and Learn babayyyyy.
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Y’all, I planted out both see from GTS and tubers. I’ve got potato plants popping up the various places, but I’m not sure which is which, sorry! One that I was pretty sure is from a tuber has flowers! I didn’t expect this. Is it worth watching for seeds? Will it even produce seeds? Did I mix something up and I did plant true see here?
and then I found this little guy!
I think it’s definitely worth watching for/saving seeds. Sample and save tubers for production next year. Saving/planting seeds results in tubers better adapted to your soil and climate. I’m pretty sure you’ll need flowers from at least 2 plants to cross and get seeds. I’ve tested random garden store tubers and gotten flowers but never found the little tomato looking seed pods.
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I’ve had about 6 seedling germinate from seeds planted early March. There only seems to be one still going but it’s finally starting to gain some size.
First potato flowers this morning! I started with about 20 viable seedlings and ended up with 12 that have made it this far – 5 with deep red or blue coloration in the leaves, 4 with slight coloration, and 3 mostly green. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well my first year of TPS growing has gone so far. Getting excited to see how it turns out.
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Got my patented 2-3 day pseudo-hard frost blast in the first week of June. All replanted tuber selctions and all of this year’s GTS TPS’s and Left-over TPS’s appear to be bouncing back nicely. Potatoes seem to handle minor hard frost damage - say an hour here and there 25-28 F. They definitely kill back some plant material but it appears as long as the main stems are untouched by the damage they can work through it. This is even true at small seedling size. They seem more robust than small tomato seedlings or eggplant seedlings. I also let the tuber first emerging leaves (from below ground) to get many frost blasts before I begin covering the plants. Anywho, the plants appear to be charging ahead. I do wonder if these damaged and dying areas of the leaves may be prone to disease but I’ll just have to continue watching. All the light brown is the dead frost kill. The wilting dark blue/black/green is the original hard frost damage.
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