Breeding Sweet Potatoes (turning them into a seed grown annual)

[AndrewB]

Is it possible you have accidentally discovered a day length neutral strain or some sort of "superbloomer"? I would mark these and watch them compared to the others.

I've been having some aphid problems in the grow tent too. Thinking of ordering 250 ladybugs on Amazon even though I only need like 5. Seems weird ordering ladybugs in winter, but I guess they are available. Maybe a local greenhouse would have them in stock too?

[Jeremy Weiss]

I'm not sure if this is possible, but, ideally, try to order ladybugs that are a species native to wherever you are. All of those Asiatic ones that keep escaping are decimating the native populations (plus, they bite, and tend to overpopulate.) Farm grown natives wouldn't be a PERFECT solution (they could still carry diseases that could pass onto the local population, same as what sometimes happens with those butterflies people buy to release at weddings,) but it seems like a better one.

I've toyed with the idea of catching a few native ladybugs from around here and breeding up my own supply, but, by now, the situation around here is so bad I basically don't SEE any native ones most years, let alone enough to make a breeding population.

[UnicornEmily]

Is it possible you have accidentally discovered a day length neutral strain or some sort of "superbloomer"?

Ooh, day length neutral would have all kinds of possibilities.  Definitely something to watch out for.

I've toyed with the idea of catching a few native ladybugs from around here and breeding up my own supply, but, by now, the situation around here is so bad I basically don't SEE any native ones most years, let alone enough to make a breeding population.

That would be a very cool thing to do.  Hard to think how you would go about it without a starting population to use for breeding.  If you had the starting population, what would you do to breed them into a big supply?

[Jeremy Weiss]

Presumably provide them with lots of food, (which I guess, would mean actively cultivating aphids, or buying those ladybug food pellets they sell) and somewhere protected where the birds won't bother them (yes, ladybugs taste bad, and birds will spit them out, but if the ladybug is already dead by then, that doesn't do much for the breeding population) and the Asiatic ones don't out compete them. Not that much different that what I do to allow caterpillars to turn into butterflies (well, except that feeding them just means making sure that the plants they like to eat are kept fresh).

Actually, by now, I think the Asiatics are so common here they have even outcompeted the equally non-native 14-spotted ladybug (the REALLY tiny, yellow shelled one with the spots that look sort of like an anchor on their back.)

[reed]

I have ever observed them to be day length sensitive. If they do have daylength sensitivity, then there are multiple variations or degrees of it. They do not all start blooming at the same time, but day length doesn't appear to be the reason for it. I have had them start blooming almost immediately after sprouting and they keep it up until frost, not daylength, puts a stop to it.

My cold, drafty, low light, windowsill where they spend the winter is about as bad a place as could be for sweet potatoes. I think that is why they stop blooming, heck they often times barely have any leaves. Existing seed capsules usually finish maturing but up till now any flower buds and any new ones that try to form just dry up and fall off when I bring them in.

Several have tried to bloom this winter with the buds aborting, as usual, but this one actually pulled it off. 

[Richard Watson]

Yes there is certainly a wide range in flowering times between cultivars, as I posted in my thread, I have one that tried to develop flowers during summer but never managed to make it happen 

[reed]

Yea, most don't start blooming until later, but I've had them that start after just one set of true leaves. Day length gets mentioned sometimes as the trigger, but I don' think that's it. I think they just bloom whenever they feel like it and daylength has nothing to do with it. All that do bloom. once they start, never stop until frost kills them.

[Cathy A]

Slightly off-topic: Has anyone identified a strain of sweet potato that can thrive in cooler soils? I don't mean really cold soil, but something like 70F instead of the 90 - 100F soils that most sweet potatoes prefer. That would make it an easy summer crop in temperate zones.

I would enjoy growing sweet potatoes in Vermont if I didn't have to take extreme measures like covering soil with black plastic to artificially raise the soil temperature.

[Richard Watson]

Slightly off-topic: Has anyone identified a strain of sweet potato that can thrive in cooler soils? I don't mean really cold soil, but something like 70F instead of the 90 - 100F soils that most sweet potatoes prefer. That would make it an easy summer crop in temperate zones.

I would enjoy growing sweet potatoes in Vermont if I didn't have to take extreme measures like covering soil with black plastic to artificially raise the soil temperature.

That's really the idea of working with seed so as to localize new cultivars that can handle cooler soils, which I have here as well 

[reed]

In the years I have been working with sweet potatoes I have firstly been focused on growing from actual seeds rather than clones. I also haven't attempted to push them so much toward tolerance for cool temperatures but instead for fast maturity. My goal there, that has largely been achieved is to go from seed to harvest, and more seed in 100 days or less. Shortening the time, it takes to get a crop rather than for cold tolerance.

What work I have done on cold tolerance has not worked well at the beginning of the season. They either don't sprout or sprout and then just sit there doing not much of anything if it isn't warm enough, especially at night.

The end of season is very different. I can't see any above ground effects when temperature falls even into the high 30s F at night, low 30s F causes color changes and a slight hint of frost kills them dead, no exceptions. I don't know if the roots are still developing then or if they had actually stopped growing when the temperature fell below 50.I suspect the roots do stop growing in the cooler temperatures.

Still, I think shortening the time to maturity serves basically the same purpose as cold tolerance.

[UnicornEmily]

Yeah, I think so, too.  It would be nice to have both, but shorter time to maturity is better, because it's useful in so many more situations!

[reed]

A page or two back on the thread I posted a little video about the plant I called Ms Bloom and how it was still blooming this winter on the cold drafty windowsill. Just above the video post I posted a photo of my "ornamental" collection. That photo post was on January 4th and it shows a flower that opened that day and that I hand pollinated. The video posted February 25th and made on February 8th shows me trying to pollinate a second flower and discovering that the January flower was indeed developing a capsule. Pollination on that second flower did not take and it aborted.

Three days ago, March 16th, I harvested the capsule from the January flower and found a single, perfect looking seed. Perfect in that it had the proper shape, no wrinkles of puckering of the seed coat and a nice dark brown color. So now I know, for sure that the plant is self-pollinating and that it takes two months or more to go from flower to dry capsule, but I think it might take a little less time outside.

The capsule and the little stem were completely dry before I picked it and I knew I had a good seed as soon as I heard the characteristic little crunch noise that they make when crushed. They don't necessarily have to make that sound, but it seems to be a tell-tale sign that everything has gone right.

[Richard Watson]

The capsule and the little stem were completely dry before I picked it and I knew I had a good seed as soon as I heard the characteristic little crunch noise that they make when crushed. They don't necessarily have to make that sound, but it seems to be a tell-tale sign that everything has gone right.

Yes, that is what I found today while removing viable seed pods from my four plants that flowered, three dried up stems and seed pods still on the plant, only one seed per seed capsule though. I can see what you mean by crunchy, wouldn't be hard to loose em.

[reed]

I haven't posted for quite a while about my sweet potatoes, so I made a little video of what is currently going on with them.

[Richard Watson]

Great to hear from you again Mark, and thanks for your update, will do another video when you empty the pots?