Since I am such a clumsy muttering paltriness-ridden novice when it comes to web sites and development.....my local friend is going to work to help me format my website that allows me to enter descriptions for TPS (true potato seed).....therefore maybe, just maybe, I will have something together before December.
I have stockpiled potato TPS for decades. I will have to blitz the TPS thing and some of my tomato seed as well. I don't think I could ever sell all of my true potato seeds unless I have multi-acre farmer customers. I could fill 50,000 or more envelopes with TPS and still have millions of seed sequestered around.
Just my Double Cross hybrid potato seed being produced this season could be a feature....and that could take 2,000 envelopes to parcel out. I don't expect to create much of a stir about TPS, but I will try.
Another area I hope to promote is the uniqueness of 4n x 2n hybrids and recombinants.
Late blight resistant packages should and ought to be a winner!
I suppose an international listing of TPS OP's would be interesting.
I won't pack up one envelop in advance since I am am way to lazy to do that ahead of time.
I think it is high time to get TPS out to folks so that true local varieties can be created and passed on to the next generation. I get emails nearly everyday from folks wanting more diversity. I would like to think I could go beyond Luther Burbank..
I borrowed a bit from this link....
http://www.arhomeandgarden.org/plant...ank_Potato.htm
Quote:
This summer the "Burbank" celebrates its 135th year of commercial cultivation. On your next trip to the grocery, where you will no doubt find mounds of the familiar brown baking potato piled high, take a moment to pay homage to this most enduring vegetable.
The potato launched the plant breeding career of the nation’s most famous plant breeder, Luther Burbank. In May1872, Burbank happened upon a ripening seed ball on an "Early Rose" potato plant in his truck patch. From the berry, he grew 23 seedlings.
According to Burbank:
"Each of these plants yielded its own individual variations, its own interpretation of long-forgotten heredity and numerous natural crossings. One, a beautiful, long red potato, decayed almost as soon as dug; another was red-skinned with white eyes; another white with red eyes; two white ones and several had eyes so deep that they were unfit for use, and all varied widely."
He selected the two white-tubered plants and in 1875 sold his interest in the best white potato to James J. H. Gregory, a seedman from Marblehead, Mass., for $150 instead of the $500 Burbank was asking.
The seedman allowed Burbank to keep 10 tubers for his own use and did the honor of naming the new potato the "Burbank." Burbank used the money to finance his move to California, where he spent the rest of his life and developed his international fame.
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In 1958, I read all of Luther Burbank's journals during a hospital stay due to a farm related injury. After I finished reading the books I remarked to myself, "Been there, done that!" I collected seeds and grew them out like some kids collect marbles at that time. Since Burbank was essentially my mentor at that time, small wonder that it felt like I spent most of my life as a kid looking for naturally crossed seeds and then making the crosses myself.
There has got to be a motto here somewhere.....seed it forward .....or maybe "Sowing it - Forwarding it" Perhaps a seedsman is a caretaker only long enough to the point where he has to say "Take care of it"
Tom Wagner