Ulluco seed production in 2015 The ulluco seed season has come to a close for 2015. Not long after the autumn equinox, when ulluco begins to form tubers, it stops producing seeds. Some varieties continue to flower, but the flowers no longer form seeds, even with hand pollination. 2015 is our third year producing seeds […]
This continues to be an exciting year on the ulluco front. We have had a total of 8 seeds germinate, one as recently as last week. The first four plants survived the fragile stage and are now vigorous and healthy, having reached perhaps half of their ultimate size (assuming that they do not grow larger […]
The 62 new oca (Oxalis tuberosa) plants that grew from this year’s seeds continue to surprise me with their huge difference in growth rates. Unfortunately, it seems that about 55 of them will be destined for the compost pile, as they are not putting on much growth and will certainly not reach the size necessary […]
I have been swapping potato seed with other growers for a while now and there is always a hunger for pictures and information about the seeds that I offer. I’m trying to get a little better at documenting the new varieties as they come out of the ground. Maybe this blog will help me to […]
It was only seven weeks ago that I posted about what then seemed a significant achievement: the collection of 1,000 oca (Oxalis tuberosa) seeds. This week, I passed 10,000. My better (and funnier) half frequently teases me because I said at the beginning of the year that I would be satisfied if I got just […]
On August 7th, I started a quick and dirty experiment to see if any of my oca (Oxalis tuberosa) seeds would germinate. Most seeds have some dormancy and won’t grow until time has passed or specific conditions of temperature and humidity are reached. I separated 60 seeds into three groups of 20. I soaked each […]
Six to eight inch cuttings are just right I wrote a couple weeks ago that I was going to try a few experiments to determine how to harvest the most oca (Oxalis tuberosa) seeds with the lowest losses (the two kind of go hand in hand). The verdict is in: indoor cuttings have provided significantly […]
I’ve had pretty good luck this year getting oca (Oxalis tuberosa) to flower and set seed. I’m growing enough plants to start to perceive some patterns regarding flowering. This information may be helpful to prospective oca breeders, but could also be misleading, based on such a limited period of time. Climate I have not grown […]
Ten freshly minted oca (Oxalis tuberosa) seeds awaited me this morning, the results of cross OC13-S10x04-05, Hopin x Unknown Orange. Although I’m sure this will soon lose its thrill, it was nearly as exciting as the first few seeds that I collected. Ten seeds seems like a pretty respectable yield, although, according to my research, […]
When my oca (Oxalis tuberosa) began to flower, I set out to learn as much as possible about crossing, since I was aware that oca has a rather complicated tristylous incompatibility system. In brief, that means that it has three types of flowers, each bearing two types of stamens, each one of which corresponds to […]