As many of my friends know, up until a few months ago I had a farm growing to produce vegetable seed for Australian seed companies. I also did some breeding on the side, mostly melons, oca, and potatoes. I live in Southern Victoria in Australia.
The land I was leasing was sold so I had to leave and after a couple of really terrible years coping with heatwaves and cockatoos eating all my crops I didn't have the money or heart to try again. I was a bit of a relief to be honest.
Anyway I love breeding potatoes so I am continuing that though it has been a bit difficult moving from a few acres in area to a back yard. I won't be able to make a living from it with this small space but it is a good hobby and I really enjoy it.
I will have to find some more space next spring as I have filled this space up and have no clean ground for replanting.
I hope you enjoy reading about my potato breeding program and I will endeavour to keep it updated a couple of times a week, at least through the growing season.
With such a small area to use I planted last seasons varieties that I selected into 2m beds holding 10 plants each. This should give me enough plants to do a basic assessment of them to see if they are good enough to keep another year.
I planted all last seasons tubers a month early, at the end of August because they were sprouting strongly in storage and I didn't want to hold them too long. I have been surprised to see that our spring frosts have not bothered the young plants at all. I will plant that early each year from now on.
The TPS (True Potato Seed) has just been planted in trays. I have one tray of diploids and one of tetraploids. It will end up being too many seedlings for my space but I will plant as many as I can find room for.
I expect them to start popping up any day now.
I will be selecting for plants that grow and tuberise well in the heat and with less water, as well, as with this one already flowering, ones that grow and tuberise quickly in early spring so the first harvest can be done before the need for irrigation.
One problem I had last year was some plants producing yellow mottled leaves. I always pulled them out as soon as I saw it in case it was a disease. It didn't look like a disease I was familiar with but I didn't want to take that chance.
A conversation among other small potato breeders showed that this is actually a physiological problem, not a pest so I will keep them this year and see if I can fix it with various growing and fertilising changes.
Other things happening in the garden
My carnivorous plants are starting to wake up from their winter nap now, and even starting to flower. You can see a little flower stalk where my finger is.These are fun and easy to grow, especially the pitcher plants. I want some much bigger plants so will repot some into bigger pots and get a couple of larger water trays when I get to town. All my plants are getting too crowded in the three trays that I already have
I grew some banana yuccas (A US plant that has some edible and other useful parts) from seed about 7-8 years ago and they never grew well. I was going to take out the last three plants that I have still surviving, then I noticed that one has its first flower. Can't pull them now, lol
Now I will have to look up whether they are self fertile before I bother hand pollinating the flowers.
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