Pampering Potatoes

[PatrickW]

Lieven and I were just talking about this with respect to the tubers you gave both of us.

If you only have one or a small number of tubers of a special variety, and you wanted to do everything possible to ensure growing success, would you do anything special with them?

Lieven for example mentioned he took your tubers, first cut them in half and let the exposed flesh cure for a few days, then started them indoors in a pot, to be transplanted after the last frost. Do you ever do anything like this?

[Tom Wagner]

Yes, I do things a little different if I have special clones....or very few of them such as a single tuber.

My two year old potatoes, for example were potted up and put into the greenhouse over a month ago. I transplanted, as pull sprouts, much like sweet potato slips the mass of emerging plants coming up from the old sprouts and also from the little aerial tubers that sprouted. I did this for clonal varieties I thought I had lost....such as Cascading Reba, Big Nine, and Tom Kaighin.

PI 604216 known only by this number..DG-D8-168 is a Polish late blight breeding line that kept really good as the original tuber from 2008 was still rather firm. I counted just now in a 5 inch pot on my front steps about 80-100 very healthy shoots ready to pull......about 3 inches high.

I also am in various stages of potting up tubers that range from 1/8 inch on up. Yes, that small! I put these pea sized tubers and smaller into the 72 cell packs for transplanting later. I don't want weeds taking over as would happen in planted directly to the field.

Tom