A visit with Tom Wagner and some interesting potatoes
 

I'm vacating in the PNW this year and arranged to visit Tom Wagner today. It was obvious from looking at his potatoes and comparing with my results in North Alabama that our climates are dramatically different. He showed me some very interesting spuds.

Chellan - This one was out of a cross with a commercial potato. The vines were huge, healthy, and the spuds were outstandingly good looking. Of the lines he showed me today, this was arguably the most impressive. It looked like a basic white potato, but with excellent disease tolerance.

I saw a purple skinned variety represented by 3 plants that had excellent looking plants and appeared to be a nearly trouble free potato. This one was such a good looking plant that I talked Tom out of one potato to take with me.

There were several varieties from Europe including one from Poland that looked like it would be an outstanding disease tolerant variety.

Yungay - This one made somewhat bumpy potatoes but they were large with huge healthy plants and very little problem with diseases.

There were tons of other potatoes to look at, but I'll let Tom talk about them.

DarJones

Dar, glad you could get away for a 'rest', and what a wonderful area to visit. Lucky you to have a visit with Tom, and even luckier to come away with a nifty new spud.

Have a good vacation. Glad to hear you got to visit Tom and see some new potatoes varieties. I am growing Yungay from TPS (now first year clone) I am not yet sure what I would get. Last year the tubers were small but tasty.

I consider myself lucky to have Mr. Jones visiting me and allowing me to do a SHOW AND TELL mostly with potatoes.

It was a difficult job to try to show him some highlights with a scant three hours...I could have used many more to explain details about many more varieties. He visited but one of my plots...so I had to talk fast.

[B]CHELLAN[/B] is a cross of Chellah.....a fairly new Irish bred potato and a un-named seedling that had great late blight resistance. I kept the two L's as Chellah has two L's and to distinguish the name from Chelan....the town and lake in central Washington. CHELLAN was a first year seedling hill during the 2011 season and the tubers of the hill were cut to make 32 hills fr 2012. I have been impressed with this clone for many reasons....the vigor, the yield, the late blight res, and the wonderful white tubers it produces. I think it is much better than the parents in nearly every respect.

I am posting a picture of the hills taken about two weeks ago. The plants look even better now. I have crosses of it taking including a cross from Skagit Plenty.
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Nice looking plants Tom.

Yes,nice alright,lots of flowers

The production of seed bearing fruits was hit or miss. Many varieties of potatoes are naturally self-sterile or pollen sterile. Tom had a few varieties that produced huge numbers of fruits. From talking with him, a high level of fertility and heavy production of berries is a significant part of his breeding efforts. Most of the berries were immature at the time we were looking, but should be mature enough for seed extraction in about 2 more weeks. A few of the fruits were in the range of 1.5 to 2 inches diameter which is relatively large for potato fruit.

Did I mention that some of the flowers were up to 2 inches across? They are pretty enough in ranges of white, pink, purple, magenta, and blue to use for a flower garden. I would suggest that some effort to select a few varieties for flowering traits could lead to a new market for potatoes. They would look great in a flower garden with a backdrop of black/red cannas or maybe with some dahlias.

DarJones

Dar, three years ago I planted a small bed with some of Tom's TPS seedlings. They bloomed non-stop for at least 2 full months, lots of pale and mid-purple flowers which actually had a nice scent. It was quite the ornamental patch and everyone who saw it remarked upon the beautiful show.

I have this ambition to utilize potatoes for more than just food. Flowers (and berries) are high priorities in my quest for enlightening folks about the beauty and sustainable nature of potatoes that go beyond normal expectations.

The picture below taken about three weeks ago shows CORINE in the foreground and about 34 vines of Muru. The Muru is standing about five feet tall or more at the present....still blooming but carrying a heavy load of berries.





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