Harvesting the first crop

Sorry more not posting more often. I don't have mush of an excuse, I just forgot.

I have harvested nearly half the beds, and the new seedlings are growing fine. The weather has been perfect so I have nothing to complain about.

Here are some of the interesting new diploids. None of these are very productive but are cute and have some novelty use. Many I would not select for but this year I am keeping everything just to keep a good bank of genetic variety.

 Pink Marbles: This is a cute but unproductive variety. The little tubers are just the right size to throw into a pot of boiling water. Boil for 5 minutes then drain and make potato salad. No peeling or cutting.
I think these marble sized spuds would look great in punnets at markets.

I have to point out that this is a short day variety and the next crop of the season will produce bigger tubers.

Little Aussie: Another cute but not real productive one. Another short day one so the next crop will be better.

These have lovely yellow flesh.










This one doesn't have a name yet. The tubers are a good size for a diploid but there are not many of them.

They have fun purple and pink skin and unusual true blue splashes in the flesh.

I am looking forward to finding out if the next crop produces better. I certainly hope so.

Article What is 'Running Out'?

I have mentioned the term 'Running Out' in potatoes a couple of times but I don't think I have actually described just what it is.

Before the 1930s farmers had noticed that when they keep planing tubers from their own crops that they had saved, every year the productivity would fall (less, and smaller tubers) until eventually the crop would be unviable and the farmer would have to buy the newest variety developed and go through the process again. They called this process of falling productivity 'Running Out'.

Of course now we know it is caused by a build up of virus in the plants, but back then they knew that this strange disease was called virus but without the ability to actually see them much of their knowledge about viruses was speculation.

I have some old farmers almanacs from the early 1930s and was interested to read a couple of articles written by farmers and scientists from the old CSIRO (when they did science to help, rather than being a profit making entity) discussing how to limit the effects of running out so farmers could continue to grow the one variety for longer with less productivity loss.

Over time farmers had noticed a lot of things about how viruses worked and discovered ways to limit it that we still use today. These can be useful to people who don't have the means to send samples off for testing.

One of the things farmers noticed, then scientists used to trial, was to grow a separate small crop of potatoes just for using as seed potatoes for their next crop. It was noticed that viruses moved very slowly through plants so if they harvested fast growing, immature tubers they would have a crop the next year that would likely have little loss in production. Immature tubers, as well as growing tips of the plants have very little virus burden.

They also used good hygiene practices like roguing out sick looking plants and the surrounding plants as soon as they were noticed, and separating potato crops with paddocks.

One of the things we can do as home gardeners and market growers can do to limit running out in their own gardens (if you don't buy certified seed potatoes every year but I suggest you do) is to replant the biggest tubers from the healthiest plants every year. This makes it easy to see if your tubers are smaller than the last year and if you notice that you need to get new, clean tubers (not from the supermarket or farmers market) and plant them in a different area of the garden.

The reason for planting only the biggest from the best is that if you heap all the tubers from all your plants together and there is a plant with a high virus burden, you can inadvertently plant some affected tubers, and next year if you do the same you will have an even bigger percentage of affected tubers. Remember that some plants don't show virus infection strongly so you may not be able to tell from the foliage, especially if you don't know what to look for.

I hope this information is helpful to you.