Update on the Potato Dance TPS plants

[svalli]

I am growing four Potato Dance plants from the seeds ContainerTed got via trade with someone at Gardenweb. Some of you may remeber the strange discussion there. The trader said that these supposed to be purple variety.

My plants are still healthy and growing so I have not dug up the tubers yet. All plants look quite similar by leave shape and size, except little variation in the stem color. One of them has flowered with faintly pink flowers. When watering them yesterday I found a small pale yellow tuber on the surface. Today I dug a bit more on the surface and found two bigger long yellow tubers. I did not dig them up totally and covered them back with soil, so they can still grow. Ted sent seeds for both Russet and the Potato Dance, and I planted both seeds, but was not able to get the Russets growing, but it may as well be that I mixed my seed trays.

Did anyone else grow these seeds? How do the plants look, any tubers yet?

Is anyone growing Russets? What color flowers do they have?

Sari

[Tom Wagner]

Thanks to the following link, I was able to compose a list restricted to flower color and russeting. Just as I suspected, slightly over half have white flowers. Of the three dozen or so here, there is quite a range of potato flower colors.

I noticed one variety (that is a cross of Russet Nugget and Ranger Russet) has flowers closer to the Ranger Russet parent. I follow flower colors into the various progeny and that would take a while to relate to all the detail that I have in my records. Since I cross reds to russets, purples to russets, fingerlings to russets and so on, I am able to get more color types into russets.

One of my diploids (Thumbed Nose) is a russet with purple spectacles. The flowers are a brilliant blue.

Since the founding mother of so many russets is the Russet Burbank (white flowers) that portends mightily into the progenies showing so many that are white.

http://oregonstate.edu/potatoes/RatingKeyWeb.htm


Cultivar

A9305-10 red-purple

AC Stampede Russet violet (m)

Alta Russet blue-violet

Alturas Russet (A82360-7) white

AO96160-3 Lavender

AO96164-1 White

AOA95154-1 *red-purple

AOND95292-1Russ white

AOND95292-3Russ white

Bannock Russet white

Blazer Russet (A8893-1) white


Butte lt mauve (m)

Century Russet white, many

Coastal Russet md-violet (m)

Crestone Russet purple

Frontier Russet white, few

Gem Russet (A8495-1) white

Gem Star Russet (A9014-2) white

Highland Russet (A9045-7) red-purple

HiLite Russet white

Keystone Russet (AC83064-1) white

Klamath Russet red-purple

Lemhi Russet red-purple white tips

ND7882b-7Russ white

Nooksack white

Norgold Russet pink

Norking Russet red-purple (wh tips)


Ranger Russet blue-lavender (m)


Rio Grande Russet (AC 89536-5) lavender (many)

Russet Burbank white

Russet Legend white

Russet Norkotah white

Russet Nugget, white, many

Silverton Russet (AC83064-6) white

Summit Russet (A84118-3) white

TX1523-1Ru/Y (Sierra Gold) lavender

Umatilla Russet lt lavender-red

Wallowa (AO97277-6) pink-lavender

Western Russet (A7961-1) white

I have tens of thousands of TPS, no make that hundreds of thousands of true potato seed with a good number of the above list that are directly or several generations back in the pedigree of my true seed collection. All but eight of the above list have been used in breeding with my material.

Tom Wagner

[svalli]

Pardon my total lack of knowledge about russets. I feel so stupid when I relized that there is not a Russet as a single variety, even I found potato bags labeled as such in the grocery stores in U.S..

What defines potato variety to be a russet? Is it the thick brown skin?


I have tried to find more information about the so called Potato Dance variety and have suspicion that these seeds were crossed for people to try to growing them and selecting the best tubers an not for certain kind purple variety like the guy on GW claimed. I found this site which fits the description on the original GW discussion.
http://www.growseed.org/potato-breeding.html

[Tom Wagner]

I was trying to find a good picture of a russet that was related to Wikipedia and here it is:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-DSC01616.JPG

Russeting can make a normal potato look more attractive, resists some surface damage during handling, helps control scab, is identified with bakers, but most importantly...is popularly linked to the Russet Burbank.

Russet potatoes seem to be a North American favorite, but other countries seek non-russets. Notice that my list is a figurative "BORN IN THE USA" potato category?

Tom Wagner

[svalli]

Thanks Tom!

The russeting makes the potatoes look like dinosaur eggs.


There are no commercial varities here which would look like that. Even the ones sold as baking potatoes, do not have the russet look. DH loves baked potatoes and we have been trying to find similar baking potatoes as in U.S., but this explains it.


Have you followed the Potato Dance TPS story, which originated from GW. What is your professional opinion about it? Could anyone have a lot of TPS seeds for one variety after crossing multiple varieties? The guy at GW was claiming so. This website may be his too http://www.biggerseeds.com/index.php...od&productId=4
After reading that site one could think that you can grow whole field for food just from TPS in one season. In my experience in short season area I need one year to grow the seed tubers from TPS and second for growing the plants from the tubers before I have enough to eat.

I'd think that in one month we will find out what kind of tubers have grown from the four Potato Dance plants and also from Wagner #7 and #8. Wagner #1 - #6 were grown from TPS last year and I will write full report about plant growth and looks and taste of the tubers after the harvest from the field. I have identified the plants from your TPS with numbers, since it was a mixture of seeds.

Sari

[svalli]

Three of the so called Potato Dance plants are now blooming and all of them have different flower colors. One is pink, other one is pink with white petal tips and third one has purple flowers. I also noticed that the laves on the purple flowered plant feel hairier when I rub them.
This conforms my suspicion that there is not a one variety, but different new crosses of potatoes dancing together...

[svalli]

Frost killed vines of the container grown TPS plants, so I harvested the potatoes
This is what grew from the four so called Potato Dance plants.

Two of the plants had just started to form tiny tubers and two had some quite large fingerlings. No taste testing or cutting to see inside color; I saved the big ones to be planted in ground next season.

[Medbury Gardens]

Well they certainly have done savlli,it will be interesting to see much of a crop you get from them next season

[GunnarSK]

Svalli (or Sari), Your potato plants and actual tubers look good and very interesting. I got some TPS (from the Canadian Durgan of IDigMyGarden, where I mostly post), and I'm looking forward to sowing them next sping here in Warsaw. For eating I'll be using seed potatoes as almost everyone else, but I expect the TPS (from the variety Russian Blue with purple skin and purple flesh) to produce at least seed tubers for next year, and maybe even something which is worth preserving as an independant variety. I don't know if the potatoes crossed or self-pollinated, but I'm already looking forward to next year's harvest.

[GunnarSK]

When I was gardening back in Denmark, potatoes were a mainstay, but I grew them from seed tubers. In fact IDigMyGarden and TomatoVille are the fist places that I learned about TPS , and Tom Wagner also made two lectures in Denmark during his recent Europe tour, in fact in "frøsamlerne", which I joined in September.
My mother was born in Toby, which is now a part of Vaasa/Vasa, and I visited several times and still have two aunts living there. Now I'm looking forward to growing potatoes for the first time from TPS. That will happen in Poland, which is another great potato growing country as Denmark or Finland.

[Tom Wagner]

Gunnar,

Thanks for your interest in growing potatoes from true seed (TPS).

I went over to IDigMyGarden to review what you may have posted there about TPS and I have a link to that here.....

Growing Potatoes from seed (TPS) - IDigMyGarden Forums

or
http://idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?p=406486

I had fun with my "Show and Tell" workshops in Denmark with the Danish Seed folks and I dropped off lots of TPS in two locations. Below is a translation of part of a Wiki of the association....

Frøsamlerne is an association whose members collect, test and supply seeds and plants of old or rare varieties, in order to preserve the genetic and cultural heritage in need.

Members' gardens are a decentralized seed bank.

I gave talks in nine of the eleven countries I visited during September and October and potatoes grown from true seed was a major topic.

Tom Wagner

[svalli]

Hej Gunnar!

Growing potatoes from TPS is exciting project, but it is not for people with short attention span. I have grown TPS plants now during two summers, so I am just a total novice with this compared to Tom, who knows everything from creating and collecting the seeds to successful growing and much much more.
Because the gardening season up here is so short I have kept the TPS plants in containers the first year. I have not eaten any of the first season tubers. Second season is in ground trial and then we did taste testing.

I have been growing Peruvian Purple from seed potatoes I grew in Wisconsin and brought with me when we moved back to Finland. This variety requires longer season than we have here and I have been looking for an other purple one, which would grow here better. So far none of the TPS, I have grown, has produced purple tubers, so it will be interesting to see what kind of results you will get with the Russian Blue.

Two more weeks and days will start getting longer and I will get itchy for starting seeds.

Hälsningar från Vasa,
Sari

[darwinslair]

So, assuming I can aquire some tps, how early do I start them, how far apart do I plant them in the ground, and how many frost-free days MUST i have to get starters for next year, and optimum, how many days to get fully mature plants and tubers right from seed assuming transplanted seedlings?

Tom

[GunnarSK]

Of course I will post the results of my TPS here, and possibly also pictures. I will try to save seeds if I get any, and I will send them to you if you want, and maybe also to Tom. It should be possible to get purple potatoes in Finland too, but no TPS of course, only seed tubers. The Swedish variety "Blue Congo" with purple skin and flesh ought to be available in Finland too, but I don't know about any particular nurseries.

[Medbury Gardens]

Originally Posted by darwinslair

So, assuming I can aquire some tps, how early do I start them, how far apart do I plant them in the ground, and how many frost-free days MUST i have to get starters for next year, and optimum, how many days to get fully mature plants and tubers right from seed assuming transplanted seedlings?

Tom

The good thing about growing TPS is they're easy to grow in pots inside during early spring, then plant out once the frosts have finshed this way extending the growing season by another 3 months,the longer you can grow them in that first season the better the size will be at the end.
Mine this season will have growing 10 months by end of April.