a secoond teosinte soak I

when i got home today i picked out seven store bought teosinte seeds to go with the fourteen i harvested from the plants in the basement and i put them in to soak in hydrogen peroxide ( 3% solution ) for twenty minutes...while they were soaking i took some brown paper towels ( these are not easy to find in the real world folks...i looked in hardware stores, home improvement stores, supermarkets, big box stores...no luck...where did i find them? the local dollar store, $1.25 for a hundred ) and soaked them in tap water that had been sitting out for at least twenty four hours...so the chlorine evanesces ( and bleached paper towels are not especially health for seeds either ) in preparation for the next step.

a second teosinte soak II

after twenty minutes i drained off the peroxide and wrapped the seeds in the wet towels, stuck them in their respectively labeled baggies, and stuck them in a box...i put the last box in the basement but i am keeping this one upstairs where it might be a tad warmer and help the germination along...the only seed that germinated in the first round was one that came from a plant out in my yard...i would certainly like to find viable seed from the indoor plants as well...the store bought seed is from last year ( i have purchased additional seed for this season 0 and i am soaking it to check its viability as well...if this round fails to germinate i will be retiring the seed from spring 2013 in favor of the fresh seed for the gardens...seven to ten days should tell the story ( fourteen at the outside )...more if and when it comes up...or even if it doesn't.

something of a post 2-16-2014

the two ollala tubers i planted eighteen days ago are up and running as well as a yema de huevos i planted about a week ago after it had produced a sprout about an inch-and-a-half long...that bring the total potato population in the basement to twenty nine plants...if all goes well that should net around eighty to ninety tubers for outdoor planting...but there aren't any yet at all...so we wait...the yema de huevos in the bushel baskets ( half bushel actually...the early blue are in the full bushels )are just fine and the teosinte has finally produced a second leaf...if i can get it through to spring it will have a significant jump on the season and that one hundred and fifty-five days to flowering will happen mid summer leaving seed ears plenty of time to mature...that isn't a done deal yet either...so we wait...this business will teach patience if nothing else...the plants have their own agenda.

something of an appendix

top to bottom: wild potato...yema de huevos...and two early blue.

early blue potatoes ( basement update I )

the early blue potato plants that were barely four inches tall twenty-six days ago are nearing two feet tall and showing lots of new growth..robust plants indoors or out, i have been hilling them steadily and will have bushel baskets full of soil, and hopefully tubers, before the planting season starts...the object of this is the production of a variety of seed potatoes for various gardens around the area...the more plants we can generate locally the better, even if they aren't natives...potatoes are an immigrant and their reach is global...we can thank andean farmers for the bewildering variety of these tubers...early blue may be exotic for anyone used to russets but they are mundane compared to some check this link out. https://research.cip.cgiar.org/confluence/display/wpa/Home

homegrown teosinte ( basement update II )

so far the only viable teosinte seed i have germinated was one from the batch off homegrown seeds from the plants out in the back yard...that plant is fine and working on a second leaf...looking like a grass more every day...the indoor plants are still down in the basement and have thoroughly died back...there are multiple seed ears on them so i harvested a handful and will be soaking them in hydrogen peroxide late to determine if they are viable at all...if the results of the first batch remain constant i should have about sixteen percent of the seed turn out to be viable...not a world's record no doubt but pleasing enough for me..more on this as it comes up.

yema de huevos ( basement update III )

altogether there are eleven yema de huevos plants up and all seem to be doing quite well so far...the tallest are approaching four inches and, ad i recall, they were not overly tall plants when i grew the first generation ( this is the third since last april )outdoors...i have been planting them in a staggered order as they sprout in the box so there will be a staggered harvest and outdoor planting in spring...there will be a lot of area devoted to potatoes this spring in the community garden, the pgp, my yard, and, i suspect, those of a few of my children...a spud happy season...the maddeningly slow wild potatoes continue to be maddeningly slow...but there is progress despite a couple of casualties...there will be more germination in the spring and i will be planting seedlings outdoors to see if that has an impact on the speed of their growth...i also have a new stock of government seed potatoes and wild potato seeds on the way...we will have wild tubers for a morphological comparison yet.