disrupted plans

my gibberellic acid arrived two days ago and so the pieces for my planned winter basement season of growing four corners potaotos form seed derived from the fruits i had harvested seemed to be moving along...i was not planning on starting anything down there until late this year or early next and when the plants had finished, if they produced tubers, i was going to grow outdoor potates cloned fron tubers grown from true seed next season...until, of course, my plans were disrupted...

when i found this spud chitting away in a corner of the plant room and very clearly almost on its last legs in terms of stored energy...feeling an obligation to, at least, provide opportunity for growth...

i planted it deep in a container leaving only the very top above the surface ( which looks actually like it was producing tubers )...added water...and turned on a grow light...we will see where we get with this.

four corners seed

the fruits i have harvested from the four corners potates have begun to soften...

so i picked out a couple of the mid-sized ones to see what i would find ( beyond the obious seeds ) in terms of numbers...

using the sharpest knife i own i cut them open...

and squeezed out the pulp...something like a tomato...which is no coincidence since they are both from the nightshade family...they are full of solanine and that always makes my hands itch...it si also toxic ( although not in the small dose one would recieve from a couple of fruits ) so it's always a good idea to wash your hands and owrk surfaces thoroughly when finished...if nothing else than to control the itiching...

these are small seeds...

about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter and exceptionally flat...

those two fuits ( and i have a dozen more to do ) yielded one hundred seeds...

which i set out on a paper towel to dry...the solanine will pretty much weld them to the toweling when it dries...no worries about lost little seeds...now to acquire some gibberellic acid and break domeancy...i grew spuds from seed a few years ago from fruits on more standard potatoes ( red pontiacs i think ) over the winter...a basement project yet again...starting in 2024 i think to time out any tuber production for summer planting...

and, while seeds are the matter at hand, it is october and teosinte seed is starting to come in...we are pleased.

four corners

over the past three months the four corners potatoes i planted on the last day of june have flowered...

and produced fruits...

fourteen of which i have retrieved as they dropped off the plants...so we may have viable seed...

today when i got home from work i noticed that two of the four plants had pretty much finished up...two are still green and one still has a fruit attached...so i decided to harvest the two that were finished...

one thing that immediately became apparent was the need for larger containers in the future...i suspect there would have been more tuber production if there had been a bit more room...

still two plants produced thirty-seven tubers...

that weighed in at a full ounce and a half...

which i do not find to shabby given the size...i will, i believe replant some of these and let them winter over outside to see what spring brings...the rest i will store in the basement and, if this past season is any sort of index, be planting again in next june.

notable sighting

the borage was looking decidedly unhappy so i dragged out a garden hose to douse it...

when i encountered a honeybee on the blooms...unremarkable except for the fact that i haven't seen a honeybee in my yard in a couple of years...that does not mean there haven't been any visiting, simply that, until a few minutes ago, i had not seen one in quite a while...we will talk about teosinte as the seeds come in.