Hello from New Mexico
Posted February 26th, 2008 by zachrey
Hello everyone!
I’m Zac helmberger and I am working with a local CSA farmer to breed a potato that is optimized for our region. We are working with a clay loam soil in Northern New Mexico near the Colorado border. We don’t have an especially long growing season so we will probably be uncosciously selecting for fast maturing breeds. We are primarily selecting for resistance to blight as this can wipe out the farmers’ crop by August 15.
We have our first generation of true seeds and are really excited about this generation of seedlings. We will plant some in flats and direct seed the rest. I have purchased a "Seed Ace" a hand pushed precision vacuum vegetable seeder that can reliably singulate small and irregular seeds such as lettuce and beets. you can see it at:
http://suttonag.com/SeedAce.html
We have about 100,000 potato seeds and the Seed Ace should help us tremendously to plant all of them with good singulation, spacing and depth. We plan to sow them at various depths from 0.5" to 1.0".
For giggles, I threw some seeds that were left over in my sieve onto the dirt in our indoor contained greywater planter and was amazed at the germination rate even though I just smeared the seeds around paying no attention to planting depth. I must’ve had at least 100 seedlings that grew happily during the winter but, as expected, they all died of blight.
I will upload pictures of the seedlings as they come available.
Thanks!
Zac Helmberger
Welcome, Zac!
Hi Zac – good to hear you’re on the same path as we are! As you can tell, this site is just getting started; we haven’t even submitted it to any search engines yet, so it’s great to have you here. Let’s stay in touch and see how we can work together – it will be great to hear how your breeding project goes!
Hello From Central New Mexico
Hello Zac!
Your project sounds very exciting, and I look forward to hearing of your further progress. I’m growing a fair amount of potatoes here, at least six different un-named varieties, all collected from various grocery stores (generic Russet, red potatoes, yellow and purple fingerlings, purple round and any others that sprouted before we could eat them. Potatoes seem to have two seasons here, a first season starting in spring (many of my potatoes are already leafed out) ending in the heat of summer with the plants flowering. Late summer, when the monsoon rains arrive, a second season begins, lasting until killing frosts.
Last season was my first experiments growing potatoes (Russet and red varieties), they seemed to be very productive under my deep mulch. Encouraged by that success, I planted a great deal more this winter. Last fall, I experimented with vertical gardening techniques, but had mixed success. Hope to have more success with the practice this season. I didn’t attempt any breeding experiments last year, but this you will give it a try. The results should be interesting, considering the wide range of varieties.
Thanks
Hi Zac
I am trying to get your current email address as I would like to get back in touch with you. We knew each other from Life Partner Quest.
Anne