Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about “landracing” potatoes and some of the other crops that I work with. I take this as a sign that Joseph Lofthouse‘s new book, Landrace Gardening, is selling well. I highly recommend it. If you have any interest in backyard vegetable breeding, click on that link and […]
There are some questions about potatoes that I get over and over again, like whether or not potato towers work, what the mysterious fruits on potato plants are, and whether or not greened potatoes are dangerous. This post is about one of those frequently asked questions that I hadn’t gotten to yet: why is my […]
Potatoes come in many colors. Tuber skin can be white, yellow, blue, or red and so can the flesh of the tuber. (I am referring here to the color of the pigments produced by the plant, so what you might describe as colors ranging from pink to magenta or powder blue to violet, I will […]
Several varieties of uniform true potato seeds are available from eastern Europe and these are commonly offered through online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon. The names of these varieties include Asol, Diva, Empress, Fermer (Farmer), Ilona, Krasa (Beauty), Milena, Revansh (Revenge), and variations and translations of these names. These varieties are not legal to grow […]
Cultivariable February 2021 Newsletter What a wild ride this year has been! It is the same for everyone I know who runs a seed company. People have taken up gardening with an enthusiasm I’ve never seen before. If even a tenth of that interest persists beyond the end of the Covid pandemic, I think it […]
It was tempting to make this post a joke and just leave it a blank page. That would, in fact, have communicated just about everything that it is useful to know about indeterminate potatoes for casual growers. Unfortunately, the proliferation of incorrect information about potato determinacy requires a little more work to correct. Ten years […]
Cultivariable October 2020 Newsletter As usual, I have done a poor job with the newsletter this year and I will now try to cram in a few before the end of the year. 2020 has certainly been a strange year for the business, along with all of the other strangeness going on in the world. […]
It has been about three years since I decided to end international shipping. Since then, I have received numerous requests to reconsider that policy, many of which were persuasive and appeal to my libertarian leanings. I have decided to resume international shipping of seeds only. I will not send roots and tubers outside the USA. […]
In part 1 of this post, I discussed the reasons for attempting to hybridize domesticated diploid potatoes with Solanum maglia. The major reason is simple exploration, but S. maglia also has some interesting traits that could be valuable. For one thing, the plants are large, with broad foliage, and might help to produce larger, higher […]
Clancy is a 2019 introduction from Bejo Seeds, a large breeder and seed producer, based in the Netherlands, who have trademarked the phrase, “True Botanical Potato Seed,” thereby cornering the market on redundancy, I guess. A friend who ordered more than he needed kindly sent me the remainder of his packet and I thought it […]