TPS growing 2014 anyone?

[gardensup]

All of this discussion and pictures of newly emerged potato seedlings is making me anxious for spring. As I look out my window I see the snow is still 2 metres (6 feet) high at the end of the driveway so I must resist the temptation to start anything for at least another week.

Having said this, here are some of the varieties I plan to evaluate this year:

Sarpo Axona (OP)
Sarpo Mira (OP)
Sarpo Mira x Vitelotte Grande #1
Sarpo Mira x Vitelotte Grande #2
Hedge Rose
Cieter's Gold
Howie Mandel
Fiesta Gold
Boyd Dude

Every year is a surprise. Often the ones I expect will be great end up being just average while others, for which I have low expectations, turn out to be the winners.

This year i ran out of ground in my garden (too much projects) so I reduced my this years seedlings to 4 varities:

Mayan Gold (phureja)
Runde Blaue Anden
Runde Blaue Anden x Mayan Gold (tuberosum x phureja)
Runde Blaue Anden x Laura

[salix]

Just doing 3 types this year:

Minnie's Pig
Nordic J.T.
Di Di DiRus

[wmontanez]

After the first bury they really grow fast. I am exposing my TPS plants to outside cold temperature to select them to be resistant to my weather. Some I lost but some are just shining. I got a pretty looking Amey X2 this was open pollinated Amey Russet seed I collected in 2011. One seedling is showing some stems red or blue color and axils color reddish? I am so so curious to see what I get. So far is the biggest seedlings with bigger leaves...

[Jayc]

Nice looking seedling, colour looks like it will be interesting.
I'm a bit behind but will be potting mine on today.

[feldon30]

This is all so interesting. Are all these TPS lines "stable" or are some for testing?

Next year I am going to get serious about TPS!

[wmontanez]

@feldon30

Are all these TPS lines "stable" or are some for testing?

TPS is like hybrid tomatoes, some have lots of diversity, if they are Open pollinated. I guess some can be somewhat predictable. I grew Yungay and from the 3 plants all very similar. Another named Oregon Peaks, same story, Pam Wagner also very similar potatoes so those were what you would expect from a "stable" tomato I guess but we are talking of potatoes. Now, some of my OP TPS are wild cards, those are interesting but sometimes a bit waste of time if most of them are not that great. When growing TPS I would say 10-25% are good to continue and the rest.....well....toss.

I have some Yungay TPS and Oregon Peaks left over if you want to try it send me a PM (This offer is for Feldon30 only sorry folks!)

[wmontanez]

Just the name alone makes me curious~!!

One having dark stem makes me even MORE curious, what am I going to get?

I am after a yellow fleshed potato similar in flavor to Skagit Valley Gold but better storage quality. I got just few SVG tubers to try to cross back to this one and one of my own Open pollinated TPS offspring from Lumper Nordic that I call Lump D'Oro that has better storage ability and great flavor too but little susceptible to scab (I think the pollen donator was SVG).

Here are my Magic Dragons so far

Yehaa, all my TPS 2014 germinated. I sowed 2 phureja / tuberosum hybrids which I had just 2 and 4 seeds each in the tiny fruits they produced but all of them germinated. They are now producing second foliage, so its a little bit to early to tell more.

[wmontanez]

I bury some seedlings 2 weeks ago. They got their 1st pot-up.
I carefully took few plants out to show the roots developing in the stem that was buried.
I got a free 5" root-trainer in my greenhouse supply store and so far I am liking the results. I will use it for TPS until they outgrow it. The roots are almost to the bottom so the stems are ~6-7in or so now from tip to end. I probably then pot-up into a larger containers (1-2gal?) with mycorrhizae in about 1 week. They take off soon after the 2nd pot up and then they are ready to plant outdoors at the end of May.

I got many different sow dates TPS seedlings going so Magic Dragon is next for 1st pot-up and Moie-Moie mix is after.....

[feldon30]

So I wanted to order some TPS last night and ended up rather bewildered.

I started up going to http://tatermaterseeds.com/ and most of the varieties have a placeholder photo and scant description. I thought about ordering TPS of Skagit Valley Gold as I know how much work Tom has put into that, but the description didn't make any sense to me:

This is a huge family of Skagit Valley Gold crosses recrossed to many other diploid (2n) phureja type potatoes so common in Peru. Lots of skin colors and flesh colors. Many with great flavors, but you have to find your faves.

So then I kept searching and found NewWorldCrops.com which redirects to TaterMaterSeeds.com.

I kept searching and stumbled upon http://www.tom8toes.com/ which says:

Formerly Tom Wagner Seeds. Tom8Toes.com is currently being upgraded and improved. We appreciate your patients while this work is in progress. Please let us know if you run into any problems ordering or need assistance.

Formerly Tom Wagner Seeds. Tom Wagner is no longer associated with Tom8toes.com. Tom8Toes is owned and operated by Gary & Josephine Cass, on a farm in Paauilo, Hawaii.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but I have limited space and want to grow just a few TPS that are reasonably stable and produce a good crop. I've seen Darrel post photos of tubers of many of these varieties, so if it would help, I'd be happy to edit/crop those photos so that there is a good photo of each TPS line to update the website.

[NathanP]

I have ordered from both sites. The fact that they have both been changed recently means few of the pictures are up to date.

I usually go to Tom's forums and search for the type I am interested it. Many of them have descriptions, if not pictures somewhere in threads on his forum.

What are you interested in?

Skagit Valley Gold is not one potato. It is a large number of closely related potatoes, that cross on an annual basis, so every generation is different, and every plant is unique. Many of the diploids sold on both sites are like this. If stable is what you want, this may not be the best TPS to choose, unless you plant TPS and save tubers you like best to replant.

[feldon30]

Wow not sure how I got so confused on Skagit Valley Gold. Tom actually sent me some tubers a few years back and they seemed like a smaller Yukon Gold and so I thought they were reasonably stable.

I probably only have 24 sq ft to dedicate to potatoes this year, as my total garden plot is under 300 sq ft (at least this year!).

I will check out Tom's forum.

[Tom Wagner]

Moot point but it has to be made.....the following has some corrections to be made

Skagit Valley Gold is not one potato. It is a large number of closely related potatoes, that cross on an annual basis, so every generation is different, and every plant is unique.

SKAGIT VALLEY GOLD is a clone....so yes, it is one potato. The many years of growing it around many ever changing groups of diploids have resulted in TPS lots that vary from year to year - plot to plot. I market the true potato seed and not the tuber vareity on my website. In the case of selling TPS of SVG, every seed is a hybrid, and every plant is indeed unique. The TPS from varietals that are largely selfers have less variation but are still individually unique.

When I sell TPS I am making reference to the female parent...so much easier that way but it does confuse folks. Of the thousands of TPS that I could make available only a scant few are in tuber form currently.

The reason I don't have pictures for all the TPS links is simple...I don't have pictures of the majority of my tuber lines. I hope to take pictures of the seedling tubers of all of my offerings later this year.

I wonder how it is going on with your TPS projects 2014.
Here in Austria snails are a big problem after a mild winter and a wet spring season. Snails had killed some of my plants after I transplanted them. Now I solved the problem and my plants start growing and producing first microtubers.
In the meantime my regular plants started flowering and I started to pollinate them. Some start setting berries.
My phureja types doing quite well this season and this year I will spend a lot of time on producing good phureja hybrids in my climate.