This year's TPS lines

[Boutique Tomatoes]

Having secured some more space for growing I decided to diversify into potatoes this year. In particular I'm looking for new blue/black or red fleshed lines, which is reflected in the varieties I started from Tom Wagner's TPS. I've ended up with 65 vigorous seedlings out of 7 different lines. Two, Mt St Helens and Redder Blood were slow to germinate so those aren't pictured, they're about two weeks behind these.

Here are pictures of a representative plant from each line.

Skagit Beets



Blue Rose



Diamond Toro




Hedge Rose



Negate



This was my first year growing from TPS and I found it less intimidating than I expected. The seedlings are a little more delicate than tomatoes or peppers but with a little extra care separating and transplanting them they were not much different.

These plants are all a little past the point they should have been transplanted, but with last weekend's frost forecast I couldn't make myself put them out and risk it. They should go in the ground tonight!

[Granite26]

Looks great! I am wanting to get into these but afraid what I might do...considering what happened when I started with toms and peppers. Hope they do well for you! Keep us posted.


How old are these plants? Thanks

[Boutique Tomatoes]

They're about 6 or 7 weeks old.

I'm a little worried too, we'll see how thin I get stretched this year. At least potatoes don't require as much attention once they're established.

[wingnut]

My seedlings do not look that good........until I plant them out in the garden. What is the soil mix You are useing if I may ask.

[Tom Wagner]

Mark, great seeing your seedlings doing as well as they are. I am especially pleased to see the coloration in the leaves of the Skagit Beets seedling with signs of it having red flesh. Blue will show up in the Diamond Toro seedling. Keep up the good work.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

Originally Posted by wingnut

My seedlings do not look that good........until I plant them out in the garden. What is the soil mix You are useing if I may ask.

They're in Pro-Mix All Purpose, which is what I use for pretty much everything these days. They germinated in the house and stayed inside for 3-5 days after transplanting before moving to the unheated garage. The garage stays between 50 and 60 most of April here and both locations have shop lights on chains for each shelf so I can move them up and down as needed. The lights stay on 16 hour cycles.

They got hit with 1/2 strength fish emulsion with a shot of SeaCom PGR added after about a week in the garage and again two weeks later. Any sunny day over 50 I carry all the plants out and put them on the driveway, but we didn't have that many of those this spring...

Basically I treated them like my tomato transplants, with the cool early growing conditions and light nutrients. I think this helps keep all my transplants from getting too leggy and the outside time with our spring winds is enough to toughen up the stems.

More than you asked, but in case someone else is thinking about trying TPS I figured I'd toss my method out there where they can find it.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

Originally Posted by Tom Wagner

Mark, great seeing your seedlings doing as well as they are. I am especially pleased to see the coloration in the leaves of the Skagit Beets seedling with signs of it having red flesh. Blue will show up in the Diamond Toro seedling. Keep up the good work.

Thanks Tom. I thought I had read you post somewhere that the leaf coloration was indicative of flesh color, so I'm hopeful I will get something interesting as I have a fair amount of color in some of the plants.

[Tom Wagner]

The photo above shows a blue skin/blue flesh clone with the telltale coloration in the center of the leaves. You can see it more vividly when looking down on the plants. At one or two O'clock...is a clone with a slight red coloration....probably just light pink flesh.

[wingnut]

Well they look strong and healthy! I think I may get some promix to try out next year.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

Originally Posted by Tom Wagner

The photo above shows a blue skin/blue flesh clone with the telltale coloration in the center of the leaves. You can see it more vividly when looking down on the plants. At one or two O'clock...is a clone with a slight red coloration....probably just light pink flesh.

Do some not show up like this? I'm curious, most of the lines have some plants with strong color, but none of the negate seedlings do.

[wmontanez]

@Marktutt
Those TPS seedlings look so healthy and vigorous you've done a really good job!

[Mark0820]

Those seedlings look very nice!

[Eirik]

Compared to mine they are outstanding!
What kind of light are you using, give us some pointers

[Boutique Tomatoes]

Just 4ft fluorescent shop lights with daylight bulbs, 6 tubes per shelf, each shelf holds 4 trays of 32 plants. The light fixtures are on chains so that I can keep them no more than 2 inches from the tops of the plants.

Everything else I do is a couple of posts up. I just generally have good luck with raising transplants, it's once I have to deal with mother nature that things get hard.

Here is a shot I took for a friend, this is on the shelves in my office where I germinate everything before it goes out in the garage. He posted a picture of some leggy seedlings and I was trying to show him what I mean by lots of light.

[wmontanez]

I use similar lights mine are T8 4ft fluorescent lights with 6500K bulbs.