The nature of the potato flower and seed is such that the sexual pollination produces seed with very different features, even if no cross-pollination of a different cultivar is allowed. This fact explains why farmers prefer to "clone"
I have been growing potatoes since 2002 but in 2008 for the first time I found seed pods - what a wonderful surprise. Well, in the spring 2008 I have started the Kenosha Potato Project, and I have planted several varieties that have set true seed pods (about 10 out of 30 cultivars- see list below).
According to Will Bonsall (the original SSE potato collection curator) vines will produce seed pods depending on soil quality, day length and other unknown factors.
In my opinion the production of seed pods is the affirmation that the selection of a particular cultivar is correct for a particular garden. For the opposite, if the vines don't produce seed, perhaps they are NOT supposed to be grown in your region.
The seed pods look like cherry tomatoes and contain between 100 and 250 seeds similar to a tomato. The seed is removed from the pods in the kitchen with a food processor in a bowl of water. The seed will drop to the bottom of the bowl, dried and stored like tomato seed. Storage in the freezer for a few weeks helps to accelerate the natural dormancy period.
I guess that if you start your seed too late in the spring, instead of producting tuberlets to start vines in the field, you may be able to transplant the vine that sprouted indoor under growing lights (like you transplant tomato vines). I'll try both methods and will post result reports at the bottom of this page.
If you want to produce a lot of potato seed pods you can graft a vine started from seed onto a tomato seedling. The tomato seedling provides the root system (which obviously will NOT produce any tubers) and the potato vine will produce a large number of flowers and seed pods.
Even if you grow only one variety of potato in your garden (even if you grow only one vine) the "autotetraploidic" nature of the potato ... wow, this is really way over my head ... but basically XX + XY chromosomes divide and recombine in 16 different possibilities - therefore each seed of the potential 250 contained in the seed pod may be one of the 16 combinations. Now, there may be potato cultivars out there that are stabilized to the point that all 16 variations are very similar and impossible to tell apart and therefore all these tubers could be named as the mother (this may be the case for the Ukrainian cultivar Ilona).
But if you, like me, grow many cultivars and allow cross pollination, well you know the mother ... but likely will not be able to determine the father of your new cultivar. Each vine may develop very different tubers. One plant may produce tubers that you want to grow out (multiply with the traditional method of cloning tubers), make sure you NAME that tuber with a new name.
Will Bonsall tells me that he has mailed true seed to SSE members and found these members reoffering tubers with the same name. This creates a lot of confusion! Very likely the new cultivars are quite different even if they share the majority of the DNA of the mother plant.
Click here to review the catalog. The production of true seed for different cultivars is disclosed in the catalog - but here we are listing the names of the cultivars that are reported to develop true seed pods (TPS) in SE Wisconsin - Note: the same cultivars in a different geographic area may not yield seed pods!
You can order seed (TPS) by becoming a member of Seed Saver Exchange or you can trade true potato seed with me on www.davesgarden.com - on DG you will only find TPS available for trade if I have enough.
Become a member of Seed Savers Exchange. www.seedsavers.org/membership
- Alaska Red
- Blue of Sweden
- Cranberry Red
- Early Ohio
- German Butterball
- German Ladyfingers
- Goldsegen
- Great Northern
- Hindenburg
- Hunter
- Maroon Bells
- Russian Blue
Click here to review other cultivars' seed listed by Curzio with SSE
Russian Blue, All Blue and Congo may be all and the same cultivar, so Blue of Sweden. The Canadian Dept of Agriculture (Agri-Canada) has performed DNA fingerprinting to determine that these cultivars are one and the same. On the other hand the Canadian Agency keeps growing these cultivars separately (and keep the different names) because even genetic fingerprinting is not the final response. Even if most chromosomes are identical, there may be factors that science is not able to detect yet, that make these cultivars different. Also you have to consider that tubers grown in different regions, different continets, may have further developed genetically with very small variancies that are hard to detect.
TPS of blue fleshed cultivars
At this time I'm not able to find the source of this information, but I recall reading in a newsletter published by Agri-Canada that the "Congo Group" cultivars are not viable as male chromosome, therefore the cultivar can only be used as the female half of any cross. If that is true, I shall not hope to find blue fleshed tubers grown from any TPS harvested from "not-blue-fleshed" vines.
All TPS that you can order from me through SSE is not produced in laboratory. My field grown crosses are the result of nature at work, including a few hives of bees.
I'm very curious to start growing vines from this seed and look forward to report back the results. UW reports that dark flesh potato cultivars may contain antioxidant levels up to 90 times greater than white flesh cultivars.
Before you start seed you need to ensure that the proper dormancy period has elapsed. Freezing seed for a few weeks helps to accelerate the dormancy.
As reported on top of this page, you can either plan to start the seed indoor in March/April and transplant to the garden when all risk of frost has passed.
Or you can start much sooner and grow the vines out under growing lights indoor. The process should yield tiny tubers (tuberlets) which are harvested and planted in the garden to germinate.
I'll test both methods and will link the result reports here!
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Looking forward to meet you at the HarborMarket of Kenosha this Saturday, or some day.
Your friends will be under the white tent,
Curzio