This year is the very beginning for this project, and there will be a lot of learning! I’m looking forward to doing some hand pollinations of potato flowers, and trying out some techniques for rapid seed tuber multiplication. I will also be practicing periodic field inspections; learning to look for signs of potato disease. Below I’ve listed my projects for this year, and have also listed varieties of seed stock I’ll be increasing.

* I’ve made some amendments to this goal list. As typical, my ambition in February is checked by the realities of mid May.

Projects/experiments

• Grow out ~400 100 potato seedlings (started from true seed). These will be harvested, evaluated, and tubers with desirable traits will be replanted 2024.
• Grow out a “seed plot bed” that is from purchased prenuclear class tubers. This will be for seed tuber production. Choice plants will be selected for future seed production, the rest of the tubers will be used to produce potatoes for food in 2024.
• Grow out potatoes for food from purchased certified seed potatoes. Data will be collected on growing methods, yields, etc. I’m hoping that using these commercial varieties will provide some baseline data to compare future variety selections against.
• Increase seed for various grains, seeds, and legumes that will be used for experiments in staple crop rotations.

Varieties being grown for seed increase

• Soup peas: Irish Prean, Darlaine, Capujiner, Red Fox Carlin
• Chickpea: Pico Pardal, Ceci Neri
• Barley: Wase Shu, Burbank
• Spring wheat: Climate blend (germ failure), Black Einkorn, Sonoran White, Ethiopian Blue-Tinged, Marquis
• Oat: Pennuda, Nash’s?, Terra didn’t have much success getting oats established this spring. Possibly sown too early?
• Sunflower: Hungarian black seeded
• Oilseed pumpkin: Emerald unfortunately ran out of time for expanding garden space
• Winter squash: Sweet Meat Oregon Homestead, Potimarron
• Quinoa: Apellewa
• Amaranth: Copperhead
• Corn: Cascade Cream Cap, Cascade Ruby Gold didn’t have space
• Bean: Black Coco

This is my spring/summer list of staple seed increases. I’ll have a list of Fall planted seed increases later this year.