TPS 2019

[Doro]

It's about 6-8 weeks before I can plant outside.
Which means that it's time to get my TPS started I'm very excited for this potato season.
What I'm sowing this year are some intentional crosses and a few seeds from bonus berries which set on their own.

Blå Congo x Salad Blue - looking for colourful early to mid season potatoes with high berry setting ability
Highland Burgundy Red x Blå Congo - looking for something starchy
Apache x Blå Congo - doing another round of these, had some plants of this cross last year and results were promising, must grow more
Mayan Gold x Inca Bella and vice versa, mixed seed, diploids - hopefully something with decent tuber dormancy will show up
Salad Blue selfed - just want to see what colours and textures it's hiding in its genepool
Linda OP - selfing unlikely, guessing on Salad Blue or Blå Congo as pollen donor, might be interesting, Linda is a really tasty and healthy growing variety
Unknown Early OP - selfing unlikely, pollen donor could be anything really, can't pass the rare occasion when an early potato successfully made seed
Heiderot F1 keeper seedling OP - ah well why not, more red potatoes will be nice

What TPS are you sowing this year?
Anyone else who is starting seeds now?

[reed]

Our climate is getting less and less friendly to potatoes, to the point I'm not devoting much effort to them. But a few seasons ago I planted the variety White Superior and one plant made two berries with seeds. I was thinking the other day I should get them out and give em a try so I'll be doing that real soon.
I have a good supply of seeds I was gifted but I read that they stay viable for a very long time so I'm leaving them in storage for now.

[Doro]

That's sad that climate change makes them increasingly difficult to grow for you. I could not imagine having to stop growing them... worst nightmare kind of thing for me. Just love potatoes lol
Have you tried first earlies? They are tricky to breed with, but they make a crop very quick. They are done in June for me or can be planted late as an autumn crop, ~4 months before fist frost. That avoids any hot dry months if that's the issue.
My TPS does not have a chance of getting old because I sow them as soon as I can. But I also heard they stay viable for some years.

[Doro]

They are up after a week and germination was quite good in all of them.

[rowan]

I have just finished harvesting mine here in Aus. The climate is getting difficult for most potatoes here but I am concentrating on selecting for more heat and dry tolerance to help with that. I have found that the diploids grow, flower and tuberise so much better in the heat than tetras so I am concentrating on those in particular - especially those that are very early to beat the hottest part of summer and have low dormancy to be able to plant two or three crops in the season. Our seasons are long here.

[bill]

Blue Congo and Salad Blue are both considered to be synonyms of All Blue, so that first cross is probably a self.  It sounds like you have plenty of diversity in the parents though, so lots of fun seedlings to look forward to.

Do you normally grow seedlings under the conditions shown?  They look like they desperately need more light.

[Doro]

@Rowan 3 crops of diploids in one year sounds wonderful! My high dormancy diploids are really struggling with the long storage. I hope they survive until planting time.

@Bill they might be considered synonyms in the US. Sadly names of varieties get confused and lumped into a familiar name a lot when they travel. But they are actually 2 different varieties in Europe. Blå Congo is an old Swedish variety. It's often called Blue Swede or Blue Congo in other European countries, but it's from Sweden. It's on the floury side, a mid season variety. The plant habit, flowers and tuber characteristics are different from the UK Salad Blue. Tuber skin colour is a warm purple on Blå Congo and a cool blueishpurple on Salad Blue. Colour saturation in the tuber is less uniform in B.C. than in S.B. The UK Salad Blue is also a very waxy salad potato, not floury at all. Both are different in taste too. Blå Congo has a good strong oldfashioned potato flavour, getting earthy if overfertilized. Salad Blue is very mild and well balanced.

I always grow them like that daylight in march is ok here, as long as it's not too cloudy all the time. I find that more light isn't really necessary for potatoes.
They get repotted once or twice before I can plant outdoors. Since I plant them deep each time, just letting the top leafs stick out, they make lots of roots on the leggy stems. I think deep rooted TPS give a better harvest than shallow plants.

[bill]

Yeah, that happens a lot with potatoes.  The names get confused and then sorting out the mess is nearly impossible.

I've always found that leggy potato seedlings are difficult to harden off, but I guess if the light improves while you are going through the process of potting them up, that probably balances things out.

[Doro]

Yeah, by now I have a whole list of potato variety synonyms. And another list with things to grow out side by side, where I am suspecting it's two varieties sharing a name.

Now I'm wondering if All Blue was a third variety originally and the imported B.C. and S.B. just got lumped into it because they are all blue hahaha I'll grow Blå Congo and Salad Blue this year. I can do a side by side picture comparison of them for reference. The differences between the two are quite obvious. It should be possible to tell if there is a third one hiding in the All Blue mystery.
Anyone growing All Blue? I know Tim isn't

The daylength is indeed rapidly increasing for me. Daylight today is 12h 25m, in 4 weeks it's 15h already and on Midsummer it's almost 19h. Not real midnight sun, but pretty long.
The only issues I have at hardening off time is the strong spring sun burning seedlings if I'm not careful. I got triple glass windows at the house, UV rays are not going through. So any plants going from the house outside have to be placed in shade for a while. Ideally I bring them out during a cloudy week.

[nathanp]

There are a lot of synonymous names for the most common blue potato

All Blue, Syn. Congo, Congo Black, Russian Blue, British Columbia Blue, McIntosh Black, River John Blue, Sharon's Blue, Blue Marker (Jewett). Probable synonyms: Blue Congo (Blaue Kongo, Blaue Schweden), Congo Blue, Purple Congo, Nova Scotia Blue, Blue of Sweden, Fenton Blue, Himalayan Black, Black Russian, Davis Purple, Eureka Purple, Purple Mountain, Shaw #7.  If this is not confusing enough, in Europe, there are two Congo cultivars (homonyms). The other one has white flowers, making it quite distinct from this one.
Parentage: Unknown, but most authorities suspect All Blue originated in the US or the UK (Scotland) in the late nineteenth century

http://www.tuckertaters.com/p_d_all_blue.html

[esoteric_agriculture]

I’m aiming to plant out at least 200 TPS seedlings this year. I potted up the seedlings last weekend into deep 32 cell Nursery type trays and added 8 cubic yards of compost to the 100x10 feet bed designated for 2019 potatoes and tilled it all well. All seed was from a generous trade from Oxbow Farms. Varieties are Magic Dragons, Unknown Diploid,Tree Leaves Mix, Cthulhu’s Jockstrap, Careta Amarilla, Bountiful, Shetland Black # 4 and # 5, Katahdin, and I think one more.😉 I’m super excited to grow these out. I’ve grown TPS before, but not for several years. I had previously grown Magic Dragons, Goldsegen, and Marron Bells.

[Oxbow Farm]

I've got about 10 TPS lines started, all but one are germinated at this point.  All stuff from the KPP seed train.  I also am going to do a germination trial of the TLSF 17 seed I produced last year, I processed the seed using two different methods, one lot with trisodium phosphate 10% solution and the other with a saturated CaOH solution.  Both methods rapidly cleaned the seed gel from the seeds, but I don't know if the CaOH is too harsh a treatment that might have damaged or killed the seed.  I'm not actually interested in growing out any TLSF 17 TPS this year, so I'm not going to count it in my grow out list. 

[bill]

I'll be growing about 5600 seedlings this year, belonging to 88 lines.  About 70% of that is andigena (of which it is about 80% tetra and 20% diploid), 20% modern, and 10% wild species and wild/domesticated crosses.  I'm hoping to find about 120 to advance to second year trials from that.

About 30% is already planted out, but the weather got pretty wet over the last week and is holding up the process.  I will now have to rush to get everything in the ground before they grow too large.

[Doro]

I'm just starting to give the seedlings their first pots. The total number is still unknown, but I already know it's more than I should grow lol as always.
So far it's just one line that's potted up, with 30 plants remaining, after discarding 11 weaklings. Might discard another 5.
Probably around 200-300 in total... I need to borrow a rotavator when the ground finally thaws.

[B. Copping]

Well, as intriguing variety names go, I think ‘Cthulhu’s Jockstrap’ is...fantastic!

I’ll suggest ‘Lovecraft’s Wedgies’ if anyone needs a name for a chipping variety that they have developed.

(No space in the garden for tps this year, alas.)

I’m aiming to plant out at least 200 TPS seedlings this year. I potted up the seedlings last weekend into deep 32 cell Nursery type trays and added 8 cubic yards of compost to the 100x10 feet bed designated for 2019 potatoes and tilled it all well. All seed was from a generous trade from Oxbow Farms. Varieties are Magic Dragons, Unknown Diploid,Tree Leaves Mix, Cthulhu’s Jockstrap, Careta Amarilla, Bountiful, Shetland Black # 4 and # 5, Katahdin, and I think one more.😉 I’m super excited to grow these out. I’ve grown TPS before, but not for several years. I had previously grown Magic Dragons, Goldsegen, and Marron Bells.