Berries!
 

I don't seem to have very good luck doing my own crosses but nature is helping out a little. I did find two Skagit Valley Gold x Thumb Nose berries from my own efforts, a couple of berries are developing on the first flowers of Juanita Norte (suspect selfing becuse the flowers didn't open well), and my Amey plants produce berries from most flowers, but it starts flowering long before the others so most are self pollinated. Mule Skinner Blues is flowering like crazy so I expect the bees to move it's pollen around to the other plants. The sweat bees and hover flies are swarming the patch so my fingers are crossed.

Amey berries

Awesome! It is like finding treasures. Last year I was lucky that Mule skinner blues began flowering at the same time Amey was and possibly the Amey X OP TPS has Mule Skinner Blues as the male parent, this year Amey is flowering later than last year most of my patch is in full bloom and the bumblebees are all over them. The crosses are sure different.

I tried SVG pollinating one cluster with Amey but didn't take... oh well

I have a row of SVG and Thumb Nose off from the main patch so the bees can go up and down the row coated with 2n pollen, and then in the middle of the main patch I have SVG next to Mule Skinner Blues (both are full of flowers) hoping that any berries on the SVG will be from the 4n varieties.

SVG...Skagit Valley Gold is a diploid and for the ovules to have unreduced gametes is slim to nil. Therefore a SVG x Tetraploid will give way less than 1% chance. A tetraploid x SVG may be a better take. The pollen is more likely to have unreduced gametes than the ovule. Some diploids have more unreduced gametes than others....that is why I used a full sib of SVG in the past for using as a male pollinating fool/tool.

The techniques of [I]unilateral sexual polyploidization[/I] ([I]4x[/I] × [I]2x[/I]) is how I obtained the TPS series with Boys Will Be, Minnie's Pig, Minnesota Duroc, Boyko Gold, Orangutan, etc. They are functional polyploids...tetraploids.

Ok. I am going to try again this weekend... right now every single plant is in bloom... a week in the 80's was magic for them.

I have been crossing everything at random this year, just hopeing to get fruit. I have 9 varieties in flower in my patch, and two in tom and I's patch. Only three seem to be producing much pollen. the plants in tom and I's patch are going to all bve in full bloom in afew days.

Just for the record, I will be driving down to Wingnut's garden after the 4th to make some crosses. I see he is starting without me.

Earlier today I transplanted about 16 lines of TPS within the greenhouse ..trying to catch up with my work. One of the hybrids I transplanted was a complicated cross whereas I used techniques of [I]unilateral sexual polyploidization[/I] ([I]4x[/I] × [I]2x[/I]).....I started with an Amey Russet flower...crossed it with Ten Fold (a sib mated offspring of a diploid that is a distant relative of Skagit Valley Gold) to get a violet russet with light yellow flesh that was a tetraploid. I crossed Amey's Fold with CoPeaks a cross of a Colorado seedling line crossed with a hybrid of Yellow Finn and Black Hills Gold. I noted quite a few tubers of different colors and skin types.

Wendy, I hope the weather does not exceed the mid 80's while you are making the crosses. After the berries take...it is somewhat OK to have temps in the 90's but for your sake...I hope it doesn't.

Tom Wagner

Wignut, it would be awesome if you get some pics/videos of Tom making crosses it can help others for

Tom, the weather gods heard my intentions of playing breeder and crossing flowers so they granted this forecast.
[IMG]http://www1.whdh.com/images/weather/producer_uploads/7day_wide_629x354.jpg?20110702054515[/IMG]

What would be an interesting cross? Most are in bloom
Skagit Valley Gold
Amey
Adirondaksen Kern Toro
Azule Rose
Muru
Angus Bull
Muruta
Leaving Seatle
India1038
Ozette
97A74
Fripapa
Marcy
Skagit Russet


The following are in almost done flowering now
Coo Khoo
Yellow Finn
Magic Molly
Red Thumb
Skagit Leap

Since I do not know what I am doing thinking of trying SVG x Amey, Ozette, ADKT, Leaving Seatte, Azule Rose, Angus Bull if I dare :cute:

Is there any way to identify a seedling as 4n x 2n, i.e. will the leaf structure of SVG show up in the seedlings. I would rather just let the bees do their thing rather than waste 4n flowers by emasculating and adding SVG pollen. Here it produces very little pollen and it doesn't seem to be very efficient in knocking up Thumb Nose (2n).

[QUOTE=Tom Wagner;221506]Just for the record, I will be driving down to Wingnut's garden after the 4th to make some crosses. I see he is starting without me.

Earlier today I transplanted about 16 lines of TPS within the greenhouse ..trying to catch up with my work. One of the hybrids I transplanted was a complicated cross whereas I used techniques of [I]unilateral sexual polyploidization[/I] ([I]4x[/I] × [I]2x[/I]).....I started with an Amey Russet flower...crossed it with Ten Fold (a sib mated offspring of a diploid that is a distant relative of Skagit Valley Gold) to get a violet russet with light yellow flesh that was a tetraploid. I crossed Amey's Fold with CoPeaks a cross of a Colorado seedling line crossed with a hybrid of Yellow Finn and Black Hills Gold. I noted quite a few tubers of different colors and skin types.

Wendy, I hope the weather does not exceed the mid 80's while you are making the crosses. After the berries take...it is somewhat OK to have temps in the 90's but for your sake...I hope it doesn't.

Tom Wagner[/QUOTE]I have not touched any flowers in our plot! I have 7 different plants blooming in my plot. I would imagine from the looks of things about twenty will be popping in Tom and I's plot over the next few days. I'm going to take pics now.
Wendy, I will at least get pics of tom pollinating, and may even try a video.

@TZ-OH6, the bees here have done an excellent job with my potatoes. I went this morning to look at the berries and found at least 3 berries in one flower cluster of Azule Rose, 4 berries in Fripapa, 2 in Amey, 1 in Red thumb, 2 in Marcy. Some plants in the middle of the patch are hard to see so will check again tomorrow with my camera in hand when I get my try at breeding LoL following this step-by-step
[URL]http://daughterofthesoil.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-breed-your-own-potatoes.html[/URL]

@Wingnut, awesome! Thanks for sharing :)

Wingnut, That will be helpful. I want to see how Tom collects pollen, but I'm on dail-up so short clips take a while.

Wendy, my fingers are crossed. The upcomming forcasted temps are a few degrees cooler here on the hot days and a couple of things will have their first flowers opening while Mules Skinner B is still in full swing.

So far I see no berries just dropped flowers! I must say it's somewhat frustrating..... Tom will be down soon I believe, so maybe my luck will change with some skilled tutoring.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! I end it with over a dozen BERRIES! Yeh! Dropped flowers, dropped flowers, and then....... fruit, fruit, fruit!

Good for you Wingnut. I have a lot of known to be pollinated flowers at the unknown point -- drying out and ready to drop or berry up.