TPS growing 2014 anyone?

[wmontanez]

aletheia ,

I am planting these days my TPS seedlings in the ground. This year is again cold in Massachusetts and my plants were slow to grow, at most they are about 5in tall (~12cm).

Some of my clones are setting clusters of flowers now...your are ahead for sure if you are pollinating plants already! Post pictures please. I enjoy seen potato plants~~~

Thanks for your reply. I will post pictures as soon as I find time for upload.

Yes the spring started very early here, so I am a little bit earlier than usual. But now plants suffer because of too hot temperatures. Last days we had up to 36°C and the phurejas struggling under this conditions. One week ago we had just 6°C in the morning hours. The plants don't like this "up and down", warm and cold.
One of my phurejas already set berries. The other ones produce a lot of flowers and produces good pollen but are not setting berries. Doesn't matter if I do selfpollination or take foreign pollen from other phureja. Maybe it is female sterile. This is very sad because it is a dark purple fingerling phureja with a huge yield. Some other phureja varities and the verrucosum struggling with the weather conditions. One variety started dying back when weather turned hot, the verrucosum has a growing depression and is very smal. The tuberosums have no problems with the weather conditions. they growing quite well and setting huge amounts of tubers. Now it start getting too dry. Yesterday I turned on artificial watering.

My TPS lines reached 25cm now. Snails are gone and they started growing very fast now. I can't wait on the first results from the phureja hybrids I produced last year.

I hope the weather will be good. I really need rain because it is much too dry for this time here but not so far away a huge thunderstorm destroyed trees and gardens.

I hope I find time for your pictures

now the promised pictures

tuberosum field


one of my most beautiful flowering tuberosum


another tuberosum with dark anthers


a phureja with lots of flowers but seems to be female sterile


another phureja, with red flowers


tuberosum berries


phureja berries





this is what I want to get. Some plants with secondary sprouting and root shoots coming up


or Plants with secondary shoots. they get very good yields even after damage through hailstorms or something else


my potatoe towers

[Eirik]

This year Im growing seedlings from last years tps growout and some new tps lines as well.

Seedlings:
Mt st helen
Magic Dragons (yellow colour, very good flavour)
Khuchi koochi (purple with yellow spots)
Diamond toro
Nordic october

Tps:
Star azul
Howie Mandel

Theres also some spuds that has overwintered in my raised beds, probably from last years tps growout. Now that shows real frost resistance, since these were frozen stiff in down to 16 - degrees!

[wmontanez]

aletheia your pictures are incredible. My TPS are sadly small too. Only one is setting flowers now.

Eirik you probably got some real winners after such frost resistance selection.
My magic dragons died due to soil fungus in my potting mix.

[Tom Wagner]

I love seeing those potato blossoms!

I am off tomorrow morning for San Diego County to review my thousands of TPS lines and hundreds of tuber lines in the field. I understand that there are lots of berries to harvest.

Harvesting berries and digging all those tuber units is going to be a taxing effort for three days worth of work...along with harvesting tomato fruits from a couple hundreds kinds of tomatoes. I will store the tubers down there but I will have to ship the berries and tomato fruits home to me.

Pity me digging 111 hills of F-2 Lump O'Gold alone. I expect to find quite a few dried potato berries in the plot.

[Wolffrunn511]

I just found TPS thru the Kenosha Potato project. Looking forward to growing them out. I was donated a few varieties from Curzio Caravati: Russian Banana, Jewett and Amarilla. Just sowed them a few days ago. I'll post updates -Andy

[joseph]

Here's what my TPS looked like a couple days ago. They are growing in an unheated greenhouse. So they have been frozen plenty of times since they germinated.