Thursday, December 26, 2013

potatoes in boxes

the wild potatoes seem to be coming along fine...i have cut down their photo period and i am leaving them in darkness at least twelve hours a day...their vertical growth has slowed 9 actually you can see in the second photo that some have lain over like vines...but they seem healthy and they are producing both new growth and new leaves...the images i pull up on line ( a maddening process...you get to see a lot of sweet potato vines when you query "wild potatoes"...wild potatoes do not have smooth, heart shaped leaves...they look much more like a domesticated potato leaf...which only makes sense ) show the plants very low to the ground unlike the domesticates...as long as they continue to develop i will assume they are healthy...the storage project may be another story...the ollalas ( third photo ) and the early blue ( fourth photo ) are still solid but they are showing increasing numbers of sprouts...they have been in boxes for nearly four month which is the outside limit in traditional storage time...we still have a few month to go and i may be asking a bit too much of them...the roja narino in the fifth photo were only brought in in october and may stand a better chance of seeing spring...the only thing to do is maintain the best possible conditions and wait... i have the yema de huevos in a separate box waiting for them to sprout before i replant...they stand a fair chance of seeing the community garden as well to go along with some yukon golds...a domesticate/domesticate ancestor/descendant pair to have a look at.

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