Potato, Wild Crosses, 10 tubers

Derived from OSSI open source varieties. Click for more information about open source seeds.

This product may produce plants with toxic levels of potato glycoalkaloids

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. I get a lot of requests for these breeding seconds and it started to occur to me that these might actually be a product with some demand, rather than compost. That actually makes good sense and I’m not sure why I didn’t approach it that way from the start.

Unlike the normal breeding seconds, this selection contains only tubers that I know, or believe to be, crosses between domesticated and wild potatoes.  It also contains culls from seedlings of Solanum curtilobum, which are effectively wild crosses, since they are about 50% S. acaule.  You can use these to seek out wild type traits and cross them into other domesticated potatoes.  You should expect long stolons, smaller tubers, possible bitterness, and a generally more invasive character than with domesticated potatoes.  I have included only those that had a reasonable tuber size and proven seed set.  The picture is not representative – I will take a better one when I have a chance.

These are unnamed, seedling year varieties. They weren’t top performers in my climate, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t perform well for you.  In fact, it is entirely possible that you could find varieties that perform better in your climate than those that I select, particularly if your climate is a lot different. I grow thousands of seedling plants in a year and rarely keep more than 20.  There are tons of great potatoes that I don’t keep simply because they aren’t exactly what I am looking for.  Generally, each potato in a packet will be different, but I am selecting randomly from bins, so it is possible you might get the occasional duplicate.  I will do my best to choose from different bins if you order more than one packet.  Dormancy varies, so some tubers will be sprouting on arrival.

These plants are generally not tested for diseases, but they are seedling year plants, so odds of diseases other than scab are low.