View Single Post
Old July 23, 2017   #7
NathanP
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: May 2013
Location: RI
Posts: 183
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by 730dcm View Post
got a questions when do you plant your tps last year? i just dug up my potatoes as they have been dead for about a month and i never noticed but i got a berry . if i plant now will i got something to replant next year zone 6b? also will all the seeds from one berry produce the same plant or will each seed in that berry make something different? i would think same but i know it wont be the same as teh red pontiac plants it came off of.thanks
730dcm, if you are growing TPS in zone 6, you are best off starting them 2 months before your last average spring frost date. Wait to plant outside until they are about 10 weeks old (8-12 weeks depending on plant size), and long past your risk of frost.

TPS plants do best with a long growing season, so starting late in the year is not advisable unless you can get at least 90 days growing outside before your first fall frost. 150 days is ideal. Some short season ones will senesce rather quickly once planted outdoors. That is not anything to worry about, it just is a sign of it being an early variety. But you won't get an idea on tuber size until it is regrowin in the 2nd year from the tubers.

The seeds in a berry must be dried and germination inhibitors stripped off before you will get good germination. Usually this takes more than a year. If you dry it and save it, your germination of that seed in the next year will be lower than in subsequent years.

Unlike growing from tubers, where each tuber is a clone of the plant it is dug from, TPS seeds are each unique. Every plant will be different. Some more highly inbred lines may result in a higher chance of a seed being like the mother plant, but the chances of it being nearly identical are somewhere around 1 in a million.

If it is from Red Pontiac, TPS may have a high percentage of red skinned white fleshed potatoes. But that depends on if it was cross pollinated by a different potato as the pollen donor. If it is a cross, it may throw tubers of another skin color in the TPS.
NathanP is offline   Reply With Quote