Potato Evaluation 2012

[wingnut]

Sorry you had to deal with this guy. You are one of the most helpful people on this thread. As for no plants makeing 10# per....that is MALARKY. I personally yielded over 10# per plant from a number of the tubers I received from tom Wagner includeing black irish. I also had a few "keepers" that yielded a little over 1/2# but were just super tasty and cool to look at. Last year my cistern went dry in august and my yields were halved in my home field.

[Tom Wagner]

Yeah, high yields per vine of potatoes are indeed possible. Just last week I had one of my cooperators help me dig row of potatoes. The single hill of IRON MAN 3 yielded 17 lbs. of potatoes with many tubers weighing over two pounds each. This variety is a red skin, pale pink flesh potato that is a bit knobby but another cooperator planted a whole row from it the other day. It appears to be out of my CASANOVA RED breeding material.

IRON MAN 3 is my nickname for this new clone. It has a huge canopy with many stems which accounts for the high yield. The stolons were not long but the tubers set fairly deep escaping all frost damage from the full year in the ground. It was also a full year in the ground the year before. You can bet I will make some attempts at crossing this year...as it must me male sterile...no berries. I have some BLACK IRISH sibs that also have high yields in the same plot near Duvall, WA. A cross of this sort could lead to all sorts of yield records.

[wmontanez]

@Wingnut
As long as me sharing information like results that I get to inspire one more gardener to not be afraid of the unknown and give a try to growing potatoes from TPS .....I am happy.


Iron Man 3 sounds like a good producer for sure! And that one called Black Irish the more I hear about it the more curious I get....so I have to and I will make space for this one next year.

[Durgan]

Talk! Let us see the well documented pictures. I have been weighing for several years and have well documented information, which is sadly lacking on this potato business and for that matter even with tomatoes.

[Tom Wagner]

The picture below shows a couple of varieties that are upright growers...very indeterminate, and late maturity. These could be used in those potato boxes, towers, tire rings, etc.




The photo below shows the same varieties in the background but also shows a very different type of potato......brachytic with multiple stolons creating new vines far and away from the base tuber, still indeterminate but in a compact way, very long maturity. These also could be used in potato boxes, towers, tire rings, etc.



Both types of potatoes had to be killed by the frost and were grown in rectangular pots....planted and left alone all spring, summer, and fall. No hilling or covering with soil. But both could be great candidates for potato towers.

Tom Wagner

[Durgan]

Tom. Those photos show a lot of vegetation, which is healthy,BUT does not address the issue of new tubers growing along the main stems like tomatoes.

Plant the one tuber alone in a two foot square box and hill as the article in the Seattle Times depicts. At the end of the season dig the potato from the top and let us see what is produced. I did it in my original post of "How a potato plant grows". This seems to get a few people's nose out of joint for some reason. I didn't modify anything, only documented what was produced.

I grow beautiful potatoes every year and seldom have anything new, usually I use the standard old established tubers as my seed. The highest production ever encountered is around 8 pounds from a few plants, and these were quality potatoes of differing sizes.

Example:
http://www.durgan.org/URL/?ZLDZE 15 September 2010 Viking Potatoes Harvested

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?RUDKB 15 September 2010 Chieftain Potatoes Harvested.

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?ATRDM 15 September 2010 Agria Potatoes Harvested

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?FBQWE 11 September 2010 Russian Blue Potatoes.

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?BKWAI 11 September 2010 Yukon Gold Test Box Potatoes

[Boutique Tomatoes]

I will try to do this as nicely as possible.

Durgan, the problem is that you're presenting yourself as an expert based on limited experience and arguing with people who really are well known experts. You disrespect others by saying their methods are flawed without knowing why they do things the way they do. Your posts show an arrogance and a lack of civility that is distasteful, so you don't get a great response to what you're saying.

Without going to a great deal of trouble to carefully remove soil to show an intact plant with tubers attached, a picture of a pile of potatoes isn't going to prove anything. The reason you can't find a picture is that nobody digs potatoes like an archaeologist. It's been explained to you why you observe the results you do based on the varieties grown, but you don't seem interested in trying to learn, only in continuing a flawed argument.

[Tracydr]

Originally Posted by marktutt

I will try to do this as nicely as possible.

Durgan, the problem is that you're presenting yourself as an expert based on limited experience and arguing with people who really are well known experts. You disrespect others by saying their methods are flawed without knowing why they do things the way they do. Your posts show an arrogance and a lack of civility that is distasteful, so you don't get a great response to what you're saying.

Without going to a great deal of trouble to carefully remove soil to show an intact plant with tubers attached, a picture of a pile of potatoes isn't going to prove anything. The reason you can't find a picture is that nobody digs potatoes like an archaeologist. It's been explained to you why you observe the results you do based on the varieties grown, but you don't seem interested in trying to learn, only in continuing a flawed argument.

Thanks for saying that!

[Tracydr]

Wendy, love what you're doing! When I move to a cooler climate I hope to use your data to grow my own potatoes from TPS

[Tom Wagner]

Tom. Those photos show a lot of vegetation, which is healthy,BUT does not address the issue of new tubers growing along the main stems like tomatoes

Durgan,

I understand the frustration of not seeing a potato vine growing in soil as view in an ant farm with the glass making every nook and twist shown. Most potato varieties are ill suited for trying to get tubers along the entire nodal vine like a tomato. The best I can explain for a potato variety that can are not commonly available. I sell TPS and not tuber varieties of late but imagine each of those nodes sending out both stolons that produce tubers and stolons that produce a new vine far from the mother plant....and those new vines repeating the process so that with additional dirt heaped on as the plant grows....one could easily fill the entire soil tower with underground branching and tuber set with dozens of periodicly emerging potato plants.

Without a good photo I thought maybe a good draw a potato variety that is capable of growing lots ot potatoes all along the nodal points. I am showing three time elapsed shots....first filling in of the soil media and two successive hilling up thence. Bearing in mind that nearly all commercial potatoes will not do this...they simply concentrate the production of tubers at the base of the tower as your photo shows on your blog. The kinds of potatoes that will perform well in a tower are those that in a conventional row will produce potato tubers two feet or more in each direction. It takes a combination of brachytic growth of new stolons that produce both new vines and new tubers.

Sorry for not taking the time to draw a perfect illustration but I am trying to get to the field to plant 135 varieties of potatoes from all over the world.

[Durgan]

Than you for verifying my presentation. Everybody is skating around the issue. Why? It is not complicated.

[Durgan]

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?QHBIN 21 August 2009 How a Potato Plant Grows

Simple folks! The container can be slammed together in about an hour or less. Digging at the end of the season takes about half an hour. Photo can be taken with those simple phone cameras. Then you can babble all you like one way of the other. Until then your argument is simply babble or empty rhetoric if you like. So far I am the only person presenting facts, real life if you like.

[Durgan]

Originally Posted by Tom Wagner

Yeah, high yields per vine of potatoes are indeed possible. Just last week I had one of my cooperators help me dig row of potatoes. The single hill of IRON MAN 3 yielded 17 lbs. of potatoes with many tubers weighing over two pounds each. This variety is a red skin, pale pink flesh potato that is a bit knobby but another cooperator planted a whole row from it the other day. It appears to be out of my CASANOVA RED breeding material.

IRON MAN 3 is my nickname for this new clone. It has a huge canopy with many stems which accounts for the high yield. The stolons were not long but the tubers set fairly deep escaping all frost damage from the full year in the ground. It was also a full year in the ground the year before. You can bet I will make some attempts at crossing this year...as it must me male sterile...no berries. I have some BLACK IRISH sibs that also have high yields in the same plot near Duvall, WA. A cross of this sort could lead to all sorts of yield records.

Just last week I had one of my cooperators help me dig row of potatoes. The single hill of IRON MAN 3 yielded 17 lbs. of potatoes with many tubers weighing over two pounds each.

And you didn't take photographs. This is almost as astonishing as seeing a dozen little green men stepping out of a Space ship.

[wmontanez]

Tom,
The illustrations are clear. So if the plant is not buried instead of stolons and new potatoes will just branch out and get big. I think that I have at least one or 2 varieties from your breeding work that shows this potential. Also one of my TPS plants the one I call "Amey Azul" did grew so huge and sent stolons everywhere but since I did not continue to hill it beyond the 2nd hilling it just got wide and unruly.

I might just enlist help of another person to see if we can take pictures to have more easier to digest evidence. Just because I see potential that this sort of information will benefit many more people that have curiosity. With 75 varieties I don't have time to take pictures of each step but focusing on one or 2 varieties it is possible to try. And ultimately YES because I think a well documented effort is a lot of fun to do regardless.

[wmontanez]

Tracy my pleasure, if you move to cooler location at least the info of storageability etc would be helpful. If I end up moving a hot weather again then I have to learn how to grow potatoes in those conditions.

Originally Posted by Tracydr

Wendy, love what you're doing! When I move to a cooler climate I hope to use your data to grow my own potatoes from TPS