Friday, July 10, 2009

MostlyPurple made my day by posting on my TaterMater Forum. She has some wonderful photos of nine of my potato varieties in full bloom and displaying a few "new" potatoes of such. Not to be totally jealous of her, I put a couple of pictures up to show one of the areas I grow potatoes and the Paint Jar potato as MostlyPurple has in her garden. I am so happy to have customer approval of my seed potatoes. Do I breed potatoes to be flowers? You be the judge!
I have posts on my own blog about the sampler I bought earlier this spring...if anyone's interested :)

http://mostlygardening.blogspot.com/2009/07/potatoes-in-bloom.html
http://mostlygardening.blogspot.com/2009/07/some-really-new-potatoes.html



Thursday, July 09, 2009

I am clarifying the photos of blue tomato lines below with some detail.
The first photo on the top left is a cross of Green Zebra X P-20 Blue (#10 2-28-09) and is a plant outdoors in Seattle. Rather cool climate and lots of clouds, but still showing the effects of the male parent which is blue. Note the dark blue shoulders of the fruit exposed to a bit more sunlight due to pruning.

The photo to the right 0f it is #24 of 2-28-09 showing the fruit cluster of Blue P-20 x Woolly Green Zebra. This is also outdoors in Seattle. It has just a bit more foliar cover than #10. Note the slight expression of the woolly gene.

The photo under #10 is also #10 but grown in a high tunnel greenhouse in the mountains of the upper Skagit River. This plant has lots of leaves and vine covering the fruit and therefore shows less purplish on the shoulders. Note the very slight stripes developing, typical of Green Zebra crosses.

The photo to the right of it shows the P-20 Blue outdoors again in Seattle. Poor cover is allowing the fruit to purple up. The cross tag shows a fruit crossed to a red tomato with the pedigree of Silvery Fir Tree X Pineapple-Elberta Girl. Nicely cut leaves with extreme woolly leaves and very early. The #25 3-309 tag shows the pollen used for the F-1 seed developing.

The bottom picture shows #9 2-28-09 (Blue P-20) as grown in the high row tunnel greenhouse in the upper Skagit area. Lots of foliage covering this fruit and had to push away about two foot of leaves. The plants are left to sprawl naturally so a a dense shade is protecting the fruit from coloring up. All of the fruits are very immature but show the effects of the blue genes.