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 […]
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 […]
Solanum ajanhuiri is a native Andean potato, grown at the highest elevations suitable for cultivation (around 13,000 feet) in Bolivia and Peru, where it can survive due to its frost and drought resistance. There is a Bolivian folk song for the planting of this potato, given here from Huaman (1980), after translation from Aymara to […]
When I am talking to someone about a potato plant, at some point in the conversation, they will point to a plant and describe what they are looking at as a branch. Potatoes actually don’t branch very much. Many, particularly modern varieties, don’t branch at all. When most people point to a potato “branch,” they […]
We’re celebrating with potato flowers instead of fireworks: Each flower in this picture is from a different variety.
Solanum maglia is a wild potato from Chile. It is kind of an oddity, because it grows in a region of South America quite some distance from both other populations of wild potatoes and from the region where domesticated potatoes were originally grown in Chile. Unlike the vast majority of wild potatoes, it is a […]
The domesticated potato (Solanum tuberosum) is divided into two major groups based on the number of sets of chromosomes: tetraploids, with four sets of chromosomes, and diploids, with two sets of chromosomes. The common potato of commerce is tetraploid. There are also hundreds, if not thousands, of varieties of diploid potatoes, but they are mostly […]
Every year, I grow many new varieties as part of our breeding program and select only a few to continue. Traditionally, I have disposed of the rest, but I regularly get requests for our breeding seconds and it started to occur to me that these might actually be a product with some demand, rather than […]