This is the first of a series of short videos that will document the process of eliminating viruses from the ‘Purple Star’ potato variety. Purple Star was selected by Nathan Pierce of the Kenosha Potato Project in 2016 and has since shown the usual signs of running out due to virus burden. In this video, […]
I noticed some subtle but consistent leaf malformation in some yacon that I am propagating this year. (This is not a named or publicly available variety – I use it for breeding.) I wasn’t sure if this was an intrinsic trait or externally caused, but I don’t remember seeing this before, so I decided to […]
Periodically, I get lots of questions about true potato seeds as an insurance policy against some sort of failure of the agricultural or food delivery system. The reasoning is straightforward enough: potato tubers don’t keep indefinitely and they take up a lot of space. True potato seeds last much longer and require very little space. […]
There is a lot of information on this website about growing potatoes from true potato seed, but I often hear from people who are interested but who don’t have the time to read all of that material. If you have heard about TPS and are wondering if it is something that you would enjoy trying […]
Would taste just as sweet? Maybe not. But it probably would taste the same. There are about 30 blue fleshed heirloom potatoes that are common in North America and Europe, but it turns out that they are almost all synonymous. This is a big problem in potatoes and with heirloom vegetables in general. People forget […]
I do most of my plant breeding work in raised beds and I often get questions about them when I post pictures, so this article will hopefully answer those questions. I have about 250 concrete block beds, which is a pretty big endorsement of their advantages. Making all those beds was a considerable investment of […]
If I had to pick one indispensable personality trait for the plant breeder, it would be patience. It is one of the few areas of endeavor I can think of where doing something the same way, repeatedly, until it works, is a viable strategy. It is surprising how often I succeed with a plant at […]
The major portion of our business is selling clonal crops, in the form of roots and tubers. Because roots and tubers are perishable and vulnerable to all kinds of problems in packing and shipping, we guarantee them. You should expect that roots and tubers that you receive will substantially sprout and grow. After that, it […]
I was recently interviewed for the Free the Seed podcast, where we discussed the selection of our new potato variety Rozette. This blog post is a companion to that podcast. The Pacific Northwest has a few heirloom potatoes that precede large scale settlement of the area by Europeans. The most famous of these potatoes is […]
In this episode of the Cultivariable podcast, I talk with Telsing Andrews, a nursery owner and plant breeder based in Ontario, Canada. We talk about the struggles of running a small nursery, sweet potato breeding, chufa, cabbage, chickpeas, sea kale, carrots, multiplier onions, and many of her other favorite plants. You can contact Telsing and […]