Messages

Good work, very cool.

Please do post more results as you get them.

Do you have shallots available to you.... 

I tend to think of shallots as heirloom French potato onions. However, they do tend to have a distinctive taste. Not bad, but different from regular onions.

In the early days, I considered using them to introduce splitting characteristics into the gene pool with the thought of breeding the taste back out but keeping the splitty-ness. I also considered doing the same with  spring onion/scallions etc. and then breeding the small size back out.

Ultimately, I decided to hold off for a year or two in order to see how things might settle out before taking drastic steps like that. I am quite pleased now that I did. At the time I took the notion that most single bulb onion types were probably descended from multiplier type ancestors. It turns out mongrelizing various common single bulb onion varieties by promiscuously crossing them with each other unlocked the latent "potato onion" genes that they were already carrying.

So the introduction of shallots was always an option - but one I was saving as a last resort. Interestingly, a small percentage of my onions come out as distinctly shallot like - so I'm thinking there are some shallot genes in there already.

Well, I have had quite a good year on my Potato Onion Resurrection Project.

For those that don't know, Potato Onions (or multiplier onions) are onions that are bred to split into bunches of multiple bulbs from a single planted bulb. You then plant one of the bulbs back and eat the remainder - much like potatos (hence the name).

There are existing lines of heirloom Potato Onions but they have the reputation of rarely setting viable seed. This makes it very difficult to work with them from a breeding perspective. I am using selective breeding of various common onion varieties to produce a variety of onion with Potato Onion characteristics that will readily split and also set viable seed.

Here is a write up on this years progress: 2025 Potato Onion Report There is a lot more detail of the projects progress and goals on that page.

As an example here is a bunch of 4 - I now have about 11 bunches of 3 and 4 onions each. All of reasonable size.



Here is a pic of the 3 and 4 bunches for the 2025 season. The white bar in the middle is a measuring stick with both centimeter and inch markings.



Here is a pic of the doubles (bunches with two onions)

Please call me Hana Yoshida, Hana written with 華 and Yoshida with 芳田.

Welcome to the forum Hana. Keep us posted on the Taraxacum officinale - a very worthwhile project.

I'm pretty sure that the Soviets did a lot of work domesticating and breeding the dandelion in the 60's and 70's. Not sure what became of the results - probably all lost in the breakup.

Very cool project!

Shane's Parrot Proof is new to me. I'm curious, what feature makes it parrot proof? Not that its much of a problem for us in Yorkshire!

Parrot proofing might be a useful characteristic to have sooner or later. Budgies (Budgerigar) are a type of parrot and are notorious for eating seeds. There are reputedly 10's of thousands wild in London and they are moving further north every year

Beautiful squashes - and well documented. Good luck with the project

I use wooden labels and just write on them with a felt tip pen. The marking lasts as long as the labels do - which is about 2 years in my rainy wet climate.

Just wrote up the progress on my Potato Onion breeding project for 2024.

https://longkeepingapples.com/PotatoOnion2024Report.html

In summary, it has been a reasonably successful year. Last year I had about 14 reasonable potato onion lines, now I have about 20. They are still smaller than I would like - but I am actively looking to breed size into them in future generations.

It is interesting to note that all of the onion bunches below are generated from single bulbs that also set seed this year. The original bulb itself is gone but managed to produce both a scape and some new bulbs at the base. It appears that these lines might be replant style perennials - setting seed is definitely not the end of the plant. I intend to conduct experiments next season to see the effect on the bulbs of preventing the onions from setting seed. I have, of course, collected the seed - in past years the seed was quite viable and I think this years should be as well.

Nice. My potato onion project is moving forward as well. Last year one bulb of a pair produced both top sets and seeds. They were smaller top sets than yours - similar to a small pea. Unfortunately all of the topset bulbs died out over last winter - they got too wet in the greenhouse and I did not rescue them in time. Very, very annoyed at myself for that.

No top sets this year - but lots of seeds. I'll post a report on this years progress once I get it organized.

https://longkeepingapples.com/PotatoOnions.html

This is very, very interesting!

Never would have thought of using something like MSG to induce polyploidy or cement to assist with wider crosses. I look forward to reading the rest of the articles on that Substack as well.

Thank you for describing your breeding technique - very interesting and educational.

Looks really interesting, however I missed your original post and didn't realise it was on.

I have now set a reminder in my calendar to look for it next year. Please do post a notice beforehand again next year.

Interesting

Hopefully these hybrids are fertile - that would be cool. I'm guessing they probably will not be - sadly, a genetic dead end.

Ah ok, this is Rubus Illecebrosus

Hmmm.... I now see what you mean. I did not know Rubus Illecebrosus existed as a species. It is sold around here as a strawberry/raspberry hybrid. I assume this is one of those errors that just seem to propagate forever.

Does anybody think R. Illecebrosus will cross with raspberrys? Any ideas how to get the seeds to germinate.

Can you tell more about this O_o

I think this is the raspberry strawberry hybrid: https://www.chrisbowers.co.uk/product/hybrid-japanstraw/

Improved cultivars of blackberrys are quite common in the UK. Here is one: https://www.chrisbowers.co.uk/product/bb-blackbeaute/

I have attached some screenshots below.

The Strawberry/raspberry has lots of seeds - don't know if they are viable. The blackberry cultivars (of various types) have no visible seeds. I am letting them rot down at the moment in the thoughts that that would probably simulate what happens in nature. Other than passing them through a digestive tract :-)