Potato Minitubers from TPS

[TZ-OH6]

I went to throw out my leftover runt seedlings that have been ignored for a month or so, and found these.

The two blue and red (segregates from All Blue) were runts. The Katahdin was just small and didn't get planted. I'm going to try to grow these out before frost just for kicks.

The plants are about 3 months old, started at the same time as my tomatoes.

[Tom Wagner]

TZ,

What you have in tubers (size is of some irrelevance) is exactly what I have been proposing for some time now; namely growing the seedlings to about 12 weeks, allowing the soil to dry down a bit during the senescence, but allowing the plant vine to totally die down for a few days to several weeks before harvesting the tiny tubers. It does not matter how small they are, I harvest tubers the size that can be laid out 8 to the inch and they willl still grow a few months later.

To see such small potatoes, and I am glad you used a dime for comparison...I do too and a tape measure to boot. Here is my avatar at a different forum...
http://mutuallyassuredsurvival.com/s...29;type=avatar
Notice how small some of those tubers are? I put these into 160 cell trays to start the plants and then transplanted to the field a weed ago. I have planted these tubers to the field directly but with the horsetail so bad in one plot the weeding is a burden. Horsetail for those who don't know what it is...http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...ed=0CDMQ9QEwBA

The problem is with these tiny tubers is that they don't store as well as larger tubers and like any potato ...the tubers should not be harvested off of green plants....as they shrivel fast otherwise.
Therefore the tubers harvested now won't grow until Sept at the earliest, but could be planted in 3 inch pots or smaller to grow another plant out, stunt it a bit and harvest the tubers say in December.

I may be starting 100,000 to a million seedlings later this summer for producing plants that will eventually look like yours, TZ...one or two tubers per plant, bulked or selected one tuber per plant and put into family unit bags for planting out to the field next year. I will likely seed most of the TSP around the first of August and harvest in November, all in the greenhouse.

The optimum first year seed tubers is about 3/4 of an oz, but tubers as small as one gram (.03573 oz) will grow a fairly decent vine. To give you an idea of a one gram potato look at my avatar linked here and you will see the tiniest tubers as a treasure. One gram potato tubers in a hundred lb. sack would number 48,000 tubers! The reality of growing tubers from true seed will give you a range of tubers size...obviously the 20 gram sized tubers would number about 2,400 per hundred lb. bag. Imagine a hundred lb. bag of regular potatoes of say...8 oz. tubers...that would only be 200 tubers! Ane furthermore, those 8 oz. tubers cut into 6 pieces each would only allow 1200 sets per bag.

In perspective it would take about one ton of conventional potatoes to plant an acre of potatoes, but with only 50 lbs of one gram potatoes I could plant the same acre! How small can the tubers be and still grow? I am getting ahead of myself..

The picture I have included has potato tubers weighing in at less than 1 gram. Compare a hunded lb. sack of wheat....it would have about 1,500,000 grains of seed. Some of my viable tubers are no bigger than a grain of wheat, and that means that a one gram tuber is 31 times the size of a wheat seed.

What I am saying is...it does not matter what the size of the tuber...it will grow but perhaps better sown like grain in trays and then transplanted to the field, greenhouse, etc. The tubers slightly larger than grain of wheat will grow and the tiniest potatoes could be transplanted to an acre with only two pounds of these tiny tubers.

In my picture there is a pea seed of a Super Sugar Snap. According to stats, a dry pea weighs about 1/5 of a gram
There are about 2,400 pea seeds per lb. Since one gram potatoes would be numbered at 480 per lb, the tuber size is much bigger than the pea. but I have viable tubers that look 1/5 the size/weight of a pea. That means that the smaller tubers could count around 12,000 per lb. just under the count for wheat at 15,000 grains per lb. Imagine again the two lbs of tiny potatoes planting an acra and the necessity of 87 lbs to plant an acre of wheat.

I double checked my math and it seems accurate.

An important thing to remember about potatoes grown from TPS, one needs high numbers to find the "Needle in the Haystack" type potato clone. By selecting out the top 10 % each year it is rather easy to find the best clones. One acre of 24,000 population TPS seedling tubers can be whittled down to 2400...the next year down to 240...and another year down to 24 at which point you may have included here the best russet, the best fingerling, the best red, the best blue flesh, the best yellow, the best orange, the best bi-color, the best diploid, the best Late Blight res., the best yielder, the best for earliness, the best for mashing, the best for baking, the best for storage and have enough left over for the best in 10 other categories.


Tom Wagner

[TZ-OH6]

Tom, thanks for the info on timing. So, it takes two months or more for a tuber to wake up after the plant dies even if it is given good "chitting conditions" (some light, warmth, humidity).

Rather than snipping them off I'm going to leave these on the bare root plants to suck the life from the plant to slow drying, and help them harden off a bit.


Should this thread be moved to the potato section?

[Tom Wagner]

TZ,

I responded here at the photo gallery to show my micro tubers in the link to my avatar if such. I got carried away with further discourse relating to the tubers of TPS. I suppose further discussion should occur at the potato sub forum.

But photos are photos and subject matters overlap. Perhaps the photos of tiny potatoes will nudge a few people over to the TVille potato forum and other forums for more information.

As far as "chitting" is concerned, my photo shows a few of the tubers that were greened up a bit from chitting, however, it did not force any earlier sprouting.

I probably should show some photos of the tiny tubers I have planted yet, with the tiny sprouts shooting up in the dark storage. Cute as all get out.

Tom Wagner

[wmontanez]

I am glad I found this thread because I just started some TPS collected from the berries of Tom's tater sampler plants on 10/10/10 so I need to let them die around mid January to plant on April .

I did try to wait to pip/chit small potatoes taken from the TPS I grew this year and they just shrivel as Tom explains why (from green plants). It may be very usefull to move this discusion to the potato forum for new potato enthusiasts like me to learn more!