potatoes from real seeds

[rdak]

Have been reading on the 'net about people leaving potatoes to form their seed pods (which apparently are poisonous) and then keeping the seeds to grow potatoes from the next year. Has anyone heard of this, or indeed tried it? General comments seem to be that the offspring tend to vary considerably but will be virus free.

Have also been reading how some people have successfully made tomato seeds germinate onto a chitted potato and produced plants with both potato tubers and tomato fruits..weird, eh?

[aquilegia]

I'd have thought potatoes grown from seed would possibly be cross-pollinated with another type of potato.

and the tomapotato - wouldn't that just be a tomato plant growing on a potato plant?

[The gardener]

Tried it once.

Managed to get a decent potato after about five years of growing it on.

It was no better than its parent, so binned it.

1st year........collected seed

2nd year....sowed and grew on, fiinished up the size of a pea.

3rd Year........Grew pea sized tuber ........grew to about 1" diameter.

4th year....grew previous years tuber to the size of a duck egg.

5th Year.....  Reasonable crop but nothing special,binned it.

At least I tried.

[Hugh_Jones]

Like The Gardener, I tried it once, using seed from Desiree pollinated from Kondor. Again, similarly to The Gardener, after sowing (under glass to lengthen the season), I got one marble sized tuber. The second year this produced three slightly larger tubers.  I reckoned it would take me at least another 2 years to get a meal out of them so I gave up and we ate them - they were exactly like Desiree.

Having said which, of course, seed is the way all new varieties are produced, but, as with all hybridising, it takes years of patience and throwing away the strugs before you come up with anything worth persevering with.

[rdak]

Hugh,
Interested how you know the Desiree got pollinated by Kondor? Did you do it by hand?

[Hugh_Jones]

Yes. A muslin bag over the Kondor flower head before it opened, and another muslin bag likewise over the Desiree, and camel hair brush duly manipulated when both opened.  There`s no other reliable way to cross polinate.