A quick review for those who have not been following our ulluco work: Ulluco is a crop that very rarely sets seed. In fact, there are only two published reports of ulluco seed production: here and at the University of Turku in the early 1990s. There is perhaps one published report of seed being found […]
Unveiling new ulluco varieties is starting to become a little routine. Oh well, there is really no rut that I would rather be stuck in. I reached a peak of 44 ulluco seedlings this year. 25 of them died, were culled due to obvious disease, or failed to set any tubers. 19 survived to the […]
We had 27 ulluco seeds germinate in 2015, but they did so over a very long period of time and more than half of them popped up in September, by which time it was growing late to produce tubers. In addition to short day length, ulluco needs a few months of growth before it is […]
I’ve announced a lot of achievements that I was proud of in this blog, but this might be my favorite. These are the new varieties that we have produced in the past couple of years, all of which have been released under the terms of the Open Source Seed Initiative pledge. That picture represents thousands […]
Ulluco seed production in 2015 The ulluco seed season has come to a close for 2015. Not long after the autumn equinox, when ulluco begins to form tubers, it stops producing seeds. Some varieties continue to flower, but the flowers no longer form seeds, even with hand pollination. 2015 is our third year producing seeds […]
The last ten days have been a remarkable run for our ulluco project. Seven new seedlings have emerged in that time, bringing the total for the year to 17, a 1.62% germination rate. So far, 14 seedlings remain alive and 6 of those are well-developed, adult plants that will almost certainly set a tuber crop […]
Ulluco is a plant with a demographic challenge. As far as we know, all of the existing ulluco varieties are old. I haven’t seen any studies that attempt to determine the age of the major cultivars, but it isn’t unreasonable to think that they could be hundreds of generations old. It probably isn’t even unthinkable […]
This continues to be an exciting year on the ulluco front. We have had a total of 8 seeds germinate, one as recently as last week. The first four plants survived the fragile stage and are now vigorous and healthy, having reached perhaps half of their ultimate size (assuming that they do not grow larger […]
This post marks the relocation of Wetting the Beds from Google Blogger to the Cultivariable web site. You will find all future posts here and hopefully I have migrated all of the old posts over here more or less seamlessly. Existing links to posts should still work, but will bring you here instead. The reasons […]
We have been very lucky to find an artist who can translate my crude scribbling into a beautiful finished product. Here is a handy introduction to the major Andean root crops: Mashua, Oca, Potato, Ulluco, and Yacon. There is also a two page flier with the same information attached below. Click here for […]