wild potatoes

earlier this morning i found a bit of time to initiate the attempt to germinate wild potato seeds and produce some tubers indoors to plant as part of the community garden ancestor/domesticate morphology comparison...if all goes well we will have tubers and perhaps even seeds...they are tiny critters and my fingers are somewhat of a disappointment when it comes to intricate maneuvers so it took a bit of time to extract three each of seeds from the bolivian and argentinian accessions...once they were removed from the small zip-loc bags they were planted in peat pots filled with a mixture of homemade compost and composted cow manure which should be rich enough to sustain seedlings readily...they were thoroughly watered and placed under the grow lights with their potato descendants...now w e wait...some research has turned up gardeners who say the germplasm they received from the same source has germinated in four days...we can hope...particularly since the bolivian accession claims 100% germination in tests in wisconsin earlier this year...the moment a green shoot is spotted there will be photos and a post...off to campus soon...more on the gardens in a bit.