This experiment is very much a real time one with none of the clear vision of hindsight. I know from the bloggers' meet in Oxford that other growers including Mustard Plaster are trying to grow potatoes from true seed.
It was new to me as I'd always grown potatoes from seed potato tubers, bought in each year as I'd never been able to store my tubers in good condition for planting the following season. And we'd always been told that we couldn't guarantee that our tubers were disease free.
Anyway, introduced to the idea at the bloggers' meet, I found some interesting and informative sites which got me going on this experiment - have a look at the International Potato Centre and this post by Daughter of the Soil .
I picked these potato berries from my crop of Cara (this year there were loads of berries on my maincrop but none on the Charlotte).
The berries were ripe, soft and sweet smelling, like the ripest bunch of grapes you've ever come across - a potential danger if you have children or pets around as the berry is packed with poisonous glycoalkaloids, 10-20 times that contained in tubers that have turned green. Don't eat them!
After scraping out the seeds I'm treating them as I would tomato seeds and have them in a jar of water to ferment for a few days. I don't know if I need to do this but it should remove any seal around the seeds that could inhibit germination. Then I'll dry them on paper and store for the winter.
About 8 weeks before the last frost I'll sow them indoors as I would tomatoes and eventually (assuming I have germination and no damping off) transplant them to the potato beds and wait and see what tubers I get. I don't think I'll get an exact replica of the parent potato, Cara, and it's likely there will be unexpected variations in tuber size, colour, taste, disease resistence etc. I suppose if some plants do better in my garden than others then I could develop stock from these - really back garden plant breeding.
Brilliant that you're trying this, John! I lost mine when the cat knocked them over but will be trying again.
Fermenting them as you would tomato seeds is a good idea. It's difficult to get the pulp off them any other way, as you've probably noticed. They are of course related to tomatoes, so a lot of the same rules apply.
And you're right, even if they are self-pollinated Cara seeds, they won't produce a Cara replica. Potatoes are tetraploid (they have double the normal number of chromosomes) so every seed is a genetic lottery! Fun!
Very best of luck with it.
Posted by: Rebsie Fairholm | October 01, 2008 at 12:26 PM
Hey, you too. Terrific, we can compare notes. I've just done a little test germination of a couple of dozen seeds (pre-cooled in the refrigerator) and they've all come up. I think I'll grow them on in the greenhouse just to see how far they get.
By the way, I can't make that link work to the 'article'.
Posted by: miss hathorn | October 01, 2008 at 11:13 PM
This is so neat. It makes me want to try it too. I didn't grow potatoes this year but I think I might simply to try growing them from seed. Thank you for this informative article. I love you all in the European Gardening community!
Posted by: Ottawa Gardener | October 02, 2008 at 02:30 PM
Hi John,
I think I still have some seeds saved from the Charlotte potatoes I grew last year, do you want them? I don't see getting around to trying them myself anytime soon.
Posted by: Patrick | October 02, 2008 at 05:26 PM
It's like christmas time when you dig up your first grow out of potatoes from true seed. We have kept two varieties from doing this about 12 years ago, one a purple skin, yellow flesh with a purple ring; the other a rosy red skin with yellow flesh and red ring, and both delicious. They were from the same parent and the best of a dozen seed grown plants. I'll post some photos on The Extreme Gardener when we dig them up in the next week or so.
Don't be discouraged if the potatoes are rather small the first year - it's usually worth giving them a couple of seasons to see their real potential.
Posted by: Leigh | October 05, 2008 at 05:02 PM
I'm having a great time growing some TPS I collected from Royal Blue potatoes last year. Some 2000 plants came up and I had to thin them to 250 plants over around 3 square metres. The plants are now almost as high as the tuber sown potatoes. I'm looking forward to harvesting the perfect potato from this experiment. I'll keep around 10 and refine the selection as I clarify my preferences.
Posted by: Adrian van Leest | November 11, 2008 at 02:06 AM
Hi there - I am desperate to get a hold of some King Edward Potato seeds (it is the only way I can legally import them to my country) and I simply cannot find them anywhere. Do you think you might know where I might be able to find them? I will happily pay for them to be sent :)
Posted by: Jamie | December 03, 2008 at 04:36 AM
great blog. Years ago I went to a workhop with this remarkable plant breeder who was breeding for plant resistance. He planted out millions of these spud seeds and then drenched them in blight solutions. Most would be wiped-out, a few would survive. He would then raise those plants, save the seeds and go at it all over again until he reached a disease resistant plant.
Anne
Posted by: anne | December 06, 2008 at 12:16 AM
Fascinating stuff! I look forward to following your progress!
Posted by: Matron | December 07, 2008 at 08:53 AM