Received Tom taters sampler today!

[platys]

I ordered my 1 pound variety late last week. I'm planning on using 15 gallon grow bags. I was looking at the ones on Gardener's Supply, but I found a cheaper source, once I factored in shipping. Gardener's Supply said to put 4 to 5 lime size pieces in on 15 gallon grow bag. Is that too many?

[wmontanez]

Hi Platys!
I am thinking 5 may be too many. Let's see what the more experienced potato growers say...

I calculated the volume of soil for an average potato plant in a row that is 18" wide, 12in spacing between plants and hilling of 6in to 9in. The volume is 0.75 to 1.125 cu ft. If you convert cubic feet to us gallons that is 5 to 7 gallons per plant. So for a 15 gallon (2.3 cu ft) would be plenty for 2 plants to grow very happy as a normal hill, maybe squeeze a 3rd plant or so. I got eight 18 gallon totes where I was planning on growing 2-3 different varieties in each tote from the sampler.

[platys]

That makes sense. My current plan was to plant two of the 15 gallons with potatoes, and one with carrots. I might order a set of 5 gallon bags for carrots, and let all three be used for potatoes.

[platys]

Yay, I got my sampler today. My husband said I was lucky he didn't accidentally fry them up for dinner.

I got:

PI 225710
Satina
Rose Finn
Banana
Chieftain
Blue Magic
Harlequin
Phuroro
Skagit Valley Gold
Skidoo
Lumper Nordic
Casa Blanca
June Bug
Navy Russet
Guisi
Small Fry

I actually almost missed Small Fry - its a teeny tiny little thing. Now I just need to make sure I plant compatible varieties together. I did read that Rose Finn grows at the surface, so may not be suitable for container growing. Does that sound right?

[Tom Wagner]

I do know that Rose Finn can produce some knobby tubers...especially closer to the surface...means you probably should add some soil media to the container to compensate for that habit.

!6 varieties in a one lb. box....not bad......and you got some kinds nobody else has but me. The standard types are in there to compare and eat first....the others maybe save to replant some day.

BTW......you have one tuber of Harlequin which is not available in the USA yet...(I know) and it is a cross of Rose Finn to Charlotte. Rose Finn is known as Pink Fir Apple in Europe. Harlequin is alot better than Rose Finn...yield, shape and flavor. A year or so ago I provided Charlotte potatoes for my friend to eat during the winter...she like them better than Sieglinde. Anyway Charlotte is from Hansa...a great potato but not near as good as Hansa's mom which is Ober Arnbacher Fruhe...one of my boyhood favorites.

Harlequin is the potato that took the title for the best flavor in blind taste tests a few years ago in the UK.
http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/★★★...%29_medium.jpg

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=120703396354

The Blue Magic is a new variety I developed and the tuber I sent you is from the first year seedling hill. It is a cross of Adirondack Blue and Magic Molly....and it should be a winner.


Casa Blanca is one of Carlos Ochoa's babies...
Here is a quote from him

I produced a commercial potato variety I called Casablanca, named after the farm of Carlos Otero, who had helped me during my experiments on the highland plain of Tarma. Casablanca became the first variety to be widely distributed in Peru. In 1947, I spearheaded Peru’s potato breeding program with an ambitious hybridization plan that used selected native varieties as progenitors. This ultimately produced the first commercial varieties obtained through genetic improvement in Peru. Potatoes produced through genetic improvement are like children: you name them, and in turn, they give you a great deal of satisfaction.

Ochoa is talking about the variety called Casa Blanca from Peru...not the more modern variety from Scotland of the same name.

I wrote about Guisi last year on the potato sub-forum but I will update my findings about it later.

Phuroro is a cross of my Thumber Time to a phureja accession (sib mated) from Peru. Even though this clones looks wildly primitive...it has flavor going back many generations of my breeding work....this one about 40 years of almost year after year of breeding phureja type potatoes.

Chieftain is the standard by which I compare my new red potato varieties to. It is the primary red grown for commercial potatoes in my area. I have followed this variety ever since it was IA 57410-10 as it was first identified in potato trials in Kansas, Missouri, etc while I was in college. The variety is over 50 years old and I still think of it as a recent potato variety. Shows how old I am getting.

I took more time to talk about these potatoes than what I intended. Taking a break from sowing true potato seed ...TPS...I am at #101 right now..which is an F-2 of Yurac Imilla x Membrilla. The parental material has been in the the seed banks for over 50 years from the Chachacomani area of Bolivia east of Lake Titicaca, about half way up the 20,000 ft. mountain. My seed sells for $5 a pkt. so that means I have been sowing over $500 worth of seed or at least what it would sell for on my website.

Tom Wagner

[platys]

Tom, thank you for all the information. I'm very excited - I love fingerlings, but my local farmers market hasn't had them the last few years. The one by my work does, but its a pain to haul a lot back on the train and my bike.

[tam91]

A t-ville member kindly gave me some of these tubors. I have to plant in containers due to my walnut trees.

I've never grown potatoes before, so have been reading up. General instructions say to plant the potatoes at the bottom of the pots (relatively) with about 4" of soil on top. Then, keep adding more soil as the plant grows. Is this the same for this kind of potato?

A few I have are Skagit Valley Gold, Skagit Beet, Red Duma F1 x Northern Cando, Purple Valley and some crosses.

A few of them have sprouted like crazy, and even have little baby potatoes growing in the air! I'd better get planting.

[Jeannine Anne]

Hi, can I jump in here.

2 things.. I have Tom's TPS but haven't started it, we have had constant rain and not able to get our new plot workable..

Tom mentioned Charlotte potatoes which happen to be one of my favourites. I grew them in tubs last year and saved some over the winter. They now have very long shoots on, I was going to chuck them out..can I still do anything with them. They have been in a box of dry peat since last fall, and seem more or less OK other than the very long pale shoots I still cannot get them in the ground but could do them in tubs, or try doing something with the shoots..never done this before though.

XX Jeannine

[Tom Wagner]

Potato tubers CAN be planted out with the long shouts/sprouts attached even if they are 15 inches long. If I do plant them out with those long sprouts..I may lay the sprouts down within the row with the tips just about at ground level. I do that if it is late in the season or if removing the sprouts leave nothing but a horribly flacid tuber remaining. If the tubers are relative firm, removal of those sprouts may not hurt the emergence of the potato vine after all.

Potatoes used for planting should be taken out of complete darkness if you storage temps rise just befor planting time and for me that is about Feb to early March.

A bit of light allows the sprout to be short and fat....low light levels or darkness markes the sprout grow out of control. They are programed to think that if the temps are warm enough they had better grow tall to try to find light even if it means that they have to grow two feet or more. Potato tubers assume that the surface is somewhere opposite of gravity.

I, too, am in a area that just keeps raining and who knows when it will quit long enough to work, rework, or otherwise prepare the soil for making rows. I expect to fight the wet weather for the next six weeks as I have thousands of varieties to plant in many locations. My area rarely has two days in a row without rain. Land plowed one day gets rained on the next day turning the soil into mud or worse.

[Jeannine Anne]

Hi Tom, I have wondered how you were getting on in this rain, you are about 2 hours away from me. My husband has been unable to get anything done at all he is ankle deep in soft mud on the new plot trying to move a heap of old rotting wood in the rain.

The Charlottes were forgotten about, I just found them last week, usually I do them as exactly as you say.

May I ask just how long could I keep from planting anything,tubers or TPS, as you know I am only back from the UK for a couple of years and still trying to relearn the Canadian seasons, it is two years yesterday since we came back and so far it has been very variable. I don't ever remember rain for as long as this is the past.

I really feel for you though, your work is so precious, it makes my small plots seem meaningless.

Good Luck

XX Jeannine

[Tom Wagner]

Jeannine,

I plant potatoes first in March within the greenhouse and in the ground if possible..not this year...and continue until sometime in July. Even though I send out tubers to others to plant, I, too, get potato tubers from other locations...just within the last two day I received 229 varieties! I want to plant so much!

I have one plot on a high glacial till deposit that is so full of stones that the tractor could barely till it last fall...and it is about an acre in size but was worked up with about 7 dump-truck loads of pressed dairy manure. That is where I am planting my first potatoes...so far it has Amey Russet, John Tom Kaighin and Skagit Valley Golds planted in it. I am hoping to plant more this weekend if it does not rain or a least by Tues/Thurs. I may not be able to handle a hoe since my arthritis is flaring up again in my hands...can't close them. and will have to ask my webmaster to do that while I drop tuber sets.
That piece of ground can be worked even just after a rain.


Charlotte.... http://completegarden.files.wordpres...pg?w=185&h=300

I will have to see that somehow you get to grow some of those again or at least some hybrids of it. Maybe Harlequin?

[Jeannine Anne]

Oh My goodness, what alot to do, I sahll really hope the rain eases up for you.

The link was bang on, my beloved Charlotte

The otheres you mentioned soiunded very interesting I am sure you will have imnporoved Charlotte, Please tell me how I can get the,, they are not on your site. I am waiting for a parcel from you..can I add toi it ans send some extra money.

Take care and don't wear yourself out.

Can I start the TPS like toms inside and what would be the latest time do you think

XX Jeannine

[tam91]

Still wondering - anyone done this in containers? Do you hill them the same as "regular" potatoes - and so should I plant them shallowly in the pot and keep adding soil as they grow?

Hoping to get these in today...

[wmontanez]

That's was my suggestion in another of your posts about growing potatoes. Maybe this video is of help, this is Mel Bartholomew the creator of the squarefoot gardening method explaining how he planted potato in a bucket.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GHsX...eature=related

[tam91]

Thank you for the link.

I remember that about putting some soil in the bottom and adding more as the plant grows, thank you. I was planning on that method. But somewhere in the dim recesses of my memory I thought I read something about Tom's potatoes (or some of them?) being more like determinate (probably the wrong word here), but that you didn't need to keep adding soil. Maybe I'm wrong there of course, I can't find again where I read that.

Unfortunately, his varieties are down on his website at the moment I think, so I haven't been able to research there.