True Potato Seeds--growing notes for 2024

Here are the potato rolls from yesterday:

Not quite ten days apart and it looks like the warmer weather finally got them growing at a faster rate. I let him know he should probably plant them out before they start making tubers in there.

He said two or three of them had started making tiny tubers, but most were just roots.

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I had it on my calendar and I still missed it!! :sob: I’m so sorry, Julia. :sob: :woman_facepalming:

Do mean the potato zoom call? That’s on June 26 :

Potato Lovers Zoom Call
Did you get the GTS potato seed mix or are growing from true seed?

Bring questions, photos, and updates on how your potato plants are doing:

Add photos to our album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/AaJeu5vmE3izkPGW9

Wow. Where was my brain. I put it on my calendar for last weekend. :woman_facepalming:

If a new podcast is coming out soon, you could ask @ShaneS to mention the potato call toward the end?

These are some of my TPS this year

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Thanks for the information! Native soil is a great idea for starting the seeds. I used a mixture of peat and ProMix which is the standard formulation we use to make soil blocks for Giving Gardens. I found that in my case i had better germination using a heat mat set to 85F. The half-packet without heat only germinated one seed (it’s a vigorous plant though).

Germination wasn’t great but I did end up with about two dozen plants which is plenty for me to work with. When i started the seeds i wasn’t thinking about soil microbes. Only was thinking about how tiny those seeds are, and how i better start them in soil blocks so i can keep track of them.





Beautiful plants Larry and Brent!

I posted this in the wrong thread earlier:

The Potato Lovers Zoom Call is coming up this Wednesday at 5 pm Pacific Time. We have a special guest coming, Curzio Caravati of the Kenosha Potato Project. He’s going to tell us about their collaborative breeding project and seed trains, and be there to answer our growing questions. Very experienced TPS grower. So bring your questions and potato love :slight_smile:

Launch Meeting - Zoom

I had an interesting talk with Curzio a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the summary of the call

 I'm going to start doing it this way too.  You?
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So my first planting of TPS were devoured by slugs, disappointing. I tried a second low effort attempt by planting some seeds in a 4" pot and leaving them where they get watered by a mini sprinkler, and got these.

They are now planted out and will hopefully have enough time to grow and produce some tubers.

While looking for a place to plant my 7 TPS plants I noticed for the first time ever berries on one of my potato plants.

I found this very exciting, and kept an eye on them until I noticed they were gone, and looked and found them under the plant. I brought them indoors and am wondering if they will ripen and produce viable seed.

I harvested the plant and the potatoes look like this.

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From what I remember reading years ago, you should have viable seeds in those fruits.

Yes those should be mature enough, just keep them as long as possible before fermenting/cleaning, in as natural an environment as possible… I put mine laying on damp soil and leaves. Avoid a plastic bag, jar, or anywhere they will get moldy or ferment. And they’ll be easier to process later if they don’t dry out, hence the damp soil.

Beautiful purple color! Looks like it’s a descendent of Cultivariable’s Azul Toro

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Thanks for that tip, I had assumed that treating them like green tomatoes would be the way to go.

Thought I’d report on my “Colorful Mix” true potato seeds I’ve got growing here in Boise, Idaho. They’ve been growing well and flowering lots, but I haven’t seen any berries. I haven’t dug any up, but I’m thinking I’ll get a good number of tubers I can plant next year, and hopefully will get some seed then. Here is a photo:

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So I harvested some potatoes from my plants that I posted above on Jul 14. I could only find 4 plants, but they all look interesting, especially the red skinned red flesh one. I find it fascinating how diverse they are. I steamed up a small one of each to taste, they all tasted good. I will grow them out next year and see how they grow.


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This was my first season growing potatoes from TPS. Sourced from Going to Seed and William Whitson at Cultivariable.

We germinated them indoors and transplanted a 100ft row outside. The plants seemed to grow more slowly than potatoes grown from tubers. But the plants kept growing later in the season, and some were still flowering when we had our first frost in mid-November when we harvested.

Yields were a bit small but not terrible, with overall smaller tubers, but some of decent size. We also got lots of fruits, and saved all of the seeds to germinate next year.




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