Musings

I’ll start this post with a disclaimer: I’m not a  potato expert by any means. I’ve grown potatoes for only three years.

I’m always interested in self-sufficiency.
Seed-saving is something of an obsession, though it’s largely been theoretical as opposed to practical (i.e. I’ve not had much time to seed-save on the scale that I’d like).

If you’ve researched the topic of potato tuber saving for planting next year, it will not have taken much time at all for you to discover that the risks of diseased tubers and lower yields increase drastically with each set of tubers that you replant.

The only way to bypass tuber-transmitted diseases is to eliminate the tuber.
Ultimately, you WILL want a ‘seed’ potato to plant, from which your crop will be harvested, but how you get that seed potato is the topic of this post.

In a booklet from the late 1800s titled ‘The Potato (How to Cultivate – Chemistry of the Potato)‘, the authors detail the use of single-eye cuttings, and how stems can be cut into sections, each of which can be planted, resulting in yet more plants (see pages 3-4).
In my first year of growing potatoes, I actually pulled sprouts from some of my purchased seed potatoes, and planted those. They grew. They produced tubers.

However, it was really only this present year that I delved into the topic further, and came across the following two links to papers produced by the International Center for Potatoes out of Lima, Peru.

The two documents only appear readable at Google’s Italian site, and it is unfortunately not able to be saved/printed, but there is invaluable information if you’re interested in cutting your seed potato supplier out of the equation.

Stem Cuttings, a Rapid Multiplication Technique for Potatoes

Single-Node cuttings, a Rapid Multiplication Technique for Potatoes

Additional information can also be found from page 111 to 114 of the book ‘Potato Seed Production for Tropical Africa‘ (this link should take you straight there.

Now, go forth and propagate!!

It’s been a while since I really wrote anything about the garden.

We had a considerable amount of lettuce that survived the winter.
When we transplanted it in the spring, it filled an entire bed and more.
The taste wasn’t particularly good, as the lettuce was so old, but we’ve left the plants to bolt, and will collect the seeds in the hope that they’ll produce an even more winter-hardy variety.

I had made hundreds of newspaper pots for seedlings in the early spring, but I believe there was something about the ink in the paper that caused the roots to be stunted.
In fact, Frank has pulled up still-intact newspaper pots from the garden, so they are absolutely NOT degrading in the way I’d hoped.

The tomatoes and brassica that were planted were very much stunted compared to those planted into plastic pots (to the tune of 3 or 4 leaves as compared to 8!).
The tomatoes that were planted into the newspaper are probably around a month behind those that were planted into plastic.
Never again.

The brassica were a miserable failure AGAIN.
I’ll have to really look into why we can’t seem to grow cabbage/broccoli/cauliflower.

The melons and squash are doing beautifully.. This is our first year growing scalloped squash – they’re sweet like yellow squash, but have a beautiful shape!!
As for melons,  we have loads growing at the moment – and some are already the size of a child’s basketball!!
I’m hoping that there will be enough heat through the next 2 months to bring ’em up to a good size.

The corn has seemed a couple weeks behind the corn in farmers’ fields, but it nevertheless silking well.

I canned 4 1/2 quarts of beans two days ago.
It would seem that  one full colander fills two quarts.

The tomato harvest is about to begin in earnest.
We’ve been picking around one a week for the last three weeks, but there are loads that are on the cusp of turning.