Because I cant seen to post a photo in the old thread I thought best to start a new one.
The new varieties have up to the shortest day been in the unheated tunnelhouse, some were looking to flash, so inside they go sitting in a north facing window. Four have kicked the bucket which is probably a good thing, weeds out the weak.
Even though this fasciated seedling started oof without a growth tip and that it ended up three months later busting out the side of the stem, it seems to have handled the first winter month in the tunnelhouse well
I direct planted about 1000 seeds this year and have in the neighborhood of 20 or so of those where the true leaves did that exact thing. Some also had off numbers of cotyledons, as in more than one set of two, or odd numbers like 3 or 5 and in some cases the normal two cotyledons except that they were fused together. Some that are producing large numbers of bloom buds even before growing true leaves are fasciated. I don't know what to do with the really weird ones, if the traits they are showing is a good or a bad thing.
I also have 200 + that are growing normally as well as developing bloom buds and showing bushy growth habit. I'm thinking maybe the best thing to do is to put all the freaky ones together, semi-isolated from the others in case these anomalies are somehow bad. I can watch their continued development this year and see what happens with their seeds next year.
well its mid summer and I have 4 good flowering cultivars, no bushy bloomers are showing up, but hey its all about, ' can I get over the try line and achieve seed'. Having Chris from the North Island being able to have crossed Marks SP line and the NZ kumara strains should help.
Updates and photos to follow.
Everything is lining up nicely,the weather is ideal with warm nights 17deg-22degC the low and daytime highs late 20's,had a thunderstorm dump 53mm in 40min, lots of lightning so that would have supplied nitrogen via the rain. So really pleased with the growth over the last week. There's four plants producing lots of flowers and lots of bumble bees visiting, at any one time there's 4-5 flying around the four flowering plants. The plant on the right is only just starting to form flowers but may miss the boat in timing it flowering with the others. The plant on the left is a total dead lose.
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Those look great. It shouldn't matter that they start blooming at different times as long as the weather holds long enough, there really isn't a season for blooming. Once they start, they just keep it up, the earlier ones will still be blooming when the later ones start. It should go on until weather puts a stop to it.
Unfortunately, rain can be an enemy of seed production. Rain plus warm can cause seed to sprout in the capsules. Rain plus cool can cause them to rot in the capsules. Warm, dry, makes for good seeds.
I think having had the SP crossed with the local strains has made a big difference, they are doing so much better than past years.
Ive not had flower clusters like in the photo before, the two buds at 12 o'clock will flower in a day or so, the one at 1.00 o'clock flowered about five days ago and is looking well anchored.
Generally, if a fertilized flower is going to abort it does it almost immediately, so looks like you are on your way. How long do you think you have before temps drop below 10 C? Although as far as maturing seeds goes and even setting new capsules you are ok as low as 3 or 4 so long as it stays dry.
I think root quality may decline at those temps, but the seed keeps on maturing. In a pinch you can dig them and harvest the roots and shove the plant in a pot. You can even leave it outside as long as it doesn't actually freeze. The leaves may dry up or drop off, but the seeds are still good.
Or you can just cut stems and put them inside in water. You'll be surprised at how many seeds finish up just fine that way. Take long cuttings and trim the bottom end every few days. Or if it spouts roots, which it likely will, you can just leave it alone and keep it overwinter as a house plant, either just in water or potted up if you want. Most capsules that are already on those cuttings will finish maturing.
When high pressure moves just to the west of NZ will be cool air mass above us meaning temps of 8-10 deg C can happen all through summer, mostly temps of 12 -15 deg at this time of year, we still have another month till the nights starts to cool.
The plant in the photo above has short flower stems which is what I had not had in past years, the others have long stems and these were still dropping off as of a week ago, now I'll see what happens to these after having had a warm week.
Short stems with lots of flowers per might be carried from bushy bloomer. I let the original bushy bloomer go extinct, but the trait continues to show up, this year I had one that did it in the extreme, way more than bushy bloomer did. Seems to me though that those with longer stems and fewer flowers per tend to make better seeds although not as many.
The bushy bloomer ones seem to make them in clusters at the growing tips and the others make a bloom stem at every or near ever leaf joint. I miss collection on some of them because they are buried down under the growth, and I don't find them before they shatter. This year I am going to try to do better at trellising them up like yours.
The plant on the right in the photo is a bushy, but a poor bloomer, shame really.
I had a great one last year, two of them actually. They had very compact extremely bushy habit and made nice deep orange roots, but they did not bloom at all. I did keep them to possibly clone this spring because the roots were so nice and with that growth habit, they would be great for growing in pots. Because of limited space though I may not use them, I really need to keep favoring the bloomers.
Would grafting a poor bloomer vine into rootstock of one that is a good bloomer cause it to flower? Maybe we can coax out more genetic diversity than we otherwise would get.
I've read scientific papers where the researchers did that and other techniques as well but all I do is select for those that bloom good because seedy sweet potatoes is a primary goal. Plus, the non-bloomers in mine and the good bloomers all came from the same original genetics so nothing really to gain by forcing blooming. I don't have specific numbers but out of any 100 seeds, some will bloom, and some won't but by selecting for those that do over the years the percentage of bloomers is going up. I just have to keep looking for those that do both, make seeds and make nice roots. I'm starting 2023 with about 15 that do both. They are clones from seeds planted in 2019 thru 2022. The only thing most of them are lacking is the very bushy growth habit that I prefer but they are also not the extremely large vines that I really dislike.
I have a list somewhere of all those I originally included and whether or not they bloomed but I can't seem to find it. I do remember that some, where blooming was mentioned in the description did not bloom and some, where that was not mentioned did bloom, but I never did anything to try to force blooming.
My wee non bushy started to grow some tinny flowers but now we are moving into autumn we can feel the start of the cool down they have got no more advanced.
I'm going to cover the plants with clear plastic to help develop the seed-heads that only one plant managed to do, all the others the flowers all fall off. I pulled off a stem and checked the head, it had very small round white balls so I'm sure they are pollinated, i'll only use the plastic during cool cloudy days.
The main problem is the summers of the last 10 years have gotten cooler and this summer just gone was the coolest of the last 10, and wet by normal standards. If only I were growing these plants in the late 90's and early 2000 when the summers were warmer and drier.
A question Mark, how long does it take you from flower fall off till seed maturity
I have never paid good enough attention to answer that question for sure. I don't know why as it seems kind of important, but it does take a while. I'd say maybe a full month.
They do mature best and fastest in warm dry weather. Over the time of my working with them we have had weather go weird in August, three times. Twice over ten years it was weirdly cool, and damp, and they just wouldn't go ahead and dry down, a lot of seeds molded in the capsules. One year, August temperatures stayed normal, but it rained at least a little bit almost every day. That year a lot of seeds sprouted inside the still green capsules. I think in the future there will be good seed years and bad seed years, but seeds stay good in storage for a long time, so a good seed year makes up for the bad ones.
You don't have to let them fully mature on the plants. You can just take a cutting with the maturing capsules and keep it inside in water.
I will take cuttings later when summer temps have finished. today will be around 30Cdeg but Sunday coming only 15deg, they will be the days the plastic goes over.
The seed stems are well over a month on the plant now.
One step closer, next stage is to now get the seeds outa the thirteen pods found so far, the pods found are over the four flowering plants which is even better. Another positive is Ive managed seed in what has been the wettest and coolest summer in the 23 years of living here, look forward to a normal dry warm summer again and how that effects the growth.
I'm sure that I am the first man/woman in the South Island to have grown Ipomoea batatas seed. There was some breeding work done back in the 80's by a then government research department in the North Island
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A good trim up and seed stems tied with white wool strips, interesting to note 12 on the east side in the below photo, one on the windy west side, you can tell our predominating wind by the grass in the back ground, there was no wind when the photo was taken.
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Found two more seed stems, up to 15 now.
Up to 20 stems found now.
Noticed that the stems were flowers about three months ago, that seems a longer time scale that what you get Mark, Im I right?
Up to four seeds now. The way things are going I should end up with around 30+. All single seed pods
Finished harvesting all the seed pods and ended up with 28 seeds, all from single pods. I now will sow hoping for at least 4 plants.
Quote from: Richard Watson on 2023-04-19, 06:35:22 PMFinished harvesting all the seed pods and ended up with 28 seeds, all from single pods. I now will sow hoping for at least 4 plants.
Great news, is that the most you have had so far? Do you mean you are going to sow them now? My season is just about to start, I have 12 "ornamental" clones kept over winter as house plants and 24 roots that I am getting ready to set in wet sand to make slips. So, 36 total individual plants sprouted from seed in the last three or four years but I'm going to go over my notes and try to slim that number down some.
It is supposed to cool off a bit next week, but we have had a stretch of pretty warm days, up to about 30 or so by your measure and quite a bit over our normal. Somebody finally sheared those poor sheep up the road, they look half the size they were and seem to be much happier.
They are the only seed so far. I think I will wait till Aug when the tunnelhouse starts to warm again when I get try and sow the seed, I wont have enough room inside the house for seedlings and past seasons cuttings. The unheated tunnelhouse is not quite warm enough to keep cuttings alive during winter.
Quote from: reed on 2023-04-20, 05:07:18 AMSomebody finally sheared those poor sheep up the road, they look half the size they were and seem to be much happier.
Poor things, they must feel much better. Find out 11th May if I'll be not to far away from your neck of the woods
Ive taken cuttings for wintering over, in the past cuttings slowly die in my unheated tunnelhouse, not that it freezes inside its that the temps are to low for them. So far this winter my cutting grown plants are looking really good, even have flowers on some. I think its because of the crossing of the local kumara strains, seem to be better adapted which also explains getting seed
Quote from: reed on 2019-04-27, 06:29:43 AMPlum Regal F5, maybe 6
i send u a pm about Plum Regal F5, can u give some more info in this toppic?
https://opensourceplantbreeding.org/forum/index.php/topic,125.msg11855.html#quickreply_anchor
Seed sown 21 Aug. Ive also had single cutting make it through the winter inside the unheated single skin tunnelhouse. Coldest frost was -7degC but never froze inside.
Another milestone past, first seeding up. :)
The 2023-24 summer growing season was a terrible period for not only my camote plants because they got hit by a surprise late spring frost, which did hit so many other gardeners locally also. They did came away again but took the summer to get big enough to flower, by then though it was starting to cool down, so no seed set this year. Ive got them all as cuttings now and will try again come spring. The good news is the first of my seedlings are good flower producing cultivars. ... so roll on spring.
How about the roots? Did they make some of any size?
Small roots. Just wasnt there summer for doing well.
Now mid winter and I'm really pleased with the cutting plants flowering, they are flowering as well as what they would during summer. Once they do go outside again they tend to stop flower till the proper warmth of summer kicks in.
You can even get seeds that way, just need to hand pollinate them. It's easy to test for self-compatibility too. They sometimes will also grow little storage roots that can be used to propagate more plants in the spring. Just cut off the tops to clone and let the little storage roots dry up a little bit, but not much, and replant them.
Rootless cuttings produce new roots to harvest better than planting an old root or a well rooted potted plant. An old root will just start growing again instead of making nice fresh new ones. It ends up big and ugly with feeder roots and stems sticking out all over it. A well rooted plant tends to make lots of small storage roots instead of a few nice big ones.
That's good to know, I'm not worried to much at this stage about the roots, more seed really.
Update on this growing season so far.
I think I am seeing some degree of adaption in the first of my own seed plants. Past generations the wintered plants during the coldest period of winter would take place inside the house as the unheated greenhouse was not quite warm enough to keep them alive, these plants would flower all winter in the house and also from August in the greenhouse once it warmed enough. Come November when planted outside they stopped producing flowers for a month or so, then start again. This spring though the wintered over plants did not stop flowering even after a few nights of around zero to 1 deg C. So now looking forward to summer and more seed production.
I harvested mine back about middle of September and just pitched the vines on the ground where they rooted down and resumed growing. A couple nights with light frost didn't bother them too much and I'm still collecting a seed here and there, but they have stopped blooming. We are supposed to hit zero C and below soon and close too it during the day. I imagine that will be the end of them.
An update on the 2024-25 summer growing season.
My seedlings grew well and produced lots of flowers which they did all through winter inside but only stopped briefly after being planted outside. The summer turned out to be a continuation of the cooler summers of the last 10 years, this summer even more so, only two day days with temps over 30degC. Had heaps of bubblebees but have picked no seed, there are seed pods out there but are not growing now that the nights are getting colder. So plans are to take them as cuttings today and see if they can mature inside where its warmer.
Mark do you have any tips as to how best I go about this.
Your idea to take cuttings inside should probably work, just remember takes longer than you might expect for them to mature.
They are probably fine outside too so long as you aren't risking actual freeze. That applies only if it is dry. A little rain, heavy morning dew, cloudy, mixed with cool weather can rot them.
Ive taken 12-13 or so, found one pod that is not too far off. The nights are getting cold and so they were not fulling out, had two very light frosts so far which is way to early. If only we could get back to the summers of 20+ years ago when we used to get heat waves, they would have grown better then.
Im going to find gardener in the North Island who will take cuttings, winter over and get seed at the end of this year, should help acclimatize to not only to growing here in the southern hemisphere but also our maritime climate....hopefully.
If you're having frost, it's definitely time to get them in. Our weather has done a bit a flip too. Almost the middle of March and I haven't done much of anything in the garden. I'd gotten used to having some planting and most all prep work done by now, last year my barley was well established at end of February. We had actual snow this year at first of January and it stayed on the ground for a month. Then more snow, more freezing until just the last few days.
Was 22 degC yesterday and starting to dry out. My house plant sweet potatoes enjoyed the day outside. Calling for sun the next several days and up to 35 degC by Friday. I'm worried that it's about to get hot and dry, fast.