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Being a number of years since these posts. Wondering if there's been any news on how things are going.

After many years of hoping my potato onions would produce flowers, I now have flower stems about two weeks away from opening. What I tried this time was to plant them along side some standard flowering onion plants which I think had triggered the potato onions into reproducing. I'm now going to cover both blocks of flowering onions with insect nests and only open one up every other day to let the flies and native bees do there thing.

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.

Shame that beans are not allowed to be imported in NZ as Fava beans do so well where I am, spring cropping produces a large amount of seed.

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.

What special favors did you carry out to enable the authorities to grant such permission

2024 has turned out to be one of the driest years I can remember. Only one large rainfall event in Oct, 85mm. The rest of the year was made up of falls lass than 20mm. The years total will come over 500mm or 20in

Amazing you got a white and red tuber from the one plant.

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.   

They say that its a cross, but I'm not so sure. The photo attached taken this morning(5th Nov) is of my walking onions that are F2's. The hand pollinating I did with both the F1 and F2 lines are 100% identical to not only each each other but also the original line, surely there would be some variation if they were in deed a cross, I think they are a mutation. In the photo the plants at the front are base onion planted which produce the largest topset, and behind are shorter plants, there are the best topset bulbils, these ive found produce the best base onions. Now that Ive given up on trying for F3 seed, this Ive found is the best way to grow productive size onions.

Enjoyed your videos Mark.

How do you treat your tubers so they store well?

Starting to get warmer days now, big (for here) -7 C deg frosts at night. Been a dry year so far with only 148mm or 6in, so hoping for some spring rains otherwise its not looking good for the summer ahead.

I ended up swooping seed with Keren and Frank Morton. They are going to use my seed within there leek breeding as well. Just starting to notice the first warming of spring so sowing will take place in the next few days

That first photo is quite a colourful flower

Thats a good thought about the water temp on hot days, I going to think about how I could set up a system, an iron bath might be an idea, before fulling with water I could spread Butynol over it surface so as to help heat the water.