ELITE POTATO WE CREATE A VARIETY OURSELVES

Favorite variety began to lose ground? Bushes get sick, there are not so many tubers under each, and are they stored worse than before? But how tasty and fruitful the potatoes were! And do not get more of this - neither friends nor in the store.

But there is a simple way out - to rejuvenate, renew, improve what is left!

Everyone knows that if you plant tubers of your last year's potatoes season after season, the yield gradually decreases and loses quality. The variety is steadily aging, and after 5-6 years it becomes completely unusable, ceases to please.

Of course, today it is not difficult to buy young seed tubers at an exhibition, at the Institute of Potato Growing or in a gardening store - the elite and even the super-elite. But planting material is expensive, and the desired varieties are not always on sale. But you can independently create an elite from an old, well-established variety. Yes, and become a homegrown, but quite a successful breeder. Here are some ways.

POTATO REJUVENATION - FLOWERS AND FRUIT

The first method allows you to get updated and promising seed tubers from botanical seeds.

To do this, you first need to collect them. They ripen after the flowering of potato bushes in fruits-berries that look like small green tomatoes. To properly extract the seeds, potato "tomatoes" are laid out in a warm place and wait for them to brighten and soften. Then the seeds are cut, washed under running water and dried.

They can be stored for 8-10 years without loss of germination or sown in the next season. One option is for seedlings in the second half of April, followed by picking into separate pots and planting in early June. Another option is immediately into open ground in mid-May to a separate loose and fertilized bed with rotted compost, for example, after beans, beans, peas.

The soil is preliminarily shed with a weak solution of a plant protection preparation against diseases or potassium permanganate. Seeds are sown to a depth of 0 cm every centimeter apart, keeping 5 cm between rows to make it easier to care for the plants. Then they are mulched with peat with a layer of 60 cm and covered with a non-woven fabric until full germination. They will appear in a week and a half. When the bushes grow up and become crowded, thinning is carried out, leaving 1-15 cm between them in rows. Removed seedlings can be transplanted. Plants need good care and regular watering. The tubers are harvested in September.

In the middle lane, one bush from a seed can yield up to 1 kg. This is the perfect healthy planting material for next spring.

Here, however, it will not do without surprises, because in terms of varietal terms, the tubers may not be the same. However, you can select the best and develop your own new variety, awakening a creative streak in yourself.

After all, how breeders do it - they select tubers from excellent bushes according to the characteristics of interest: yield, appearance, taste, etc. And as a result, after a few years, an improved variety is obtained. Here is a major update.

However, you can not bother with the collection of potato berries, but buy bags of botanical seeds of a particular variety. Today, their range is already quite wide, and they are cheaper than elite seed tubers.

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Reference by topic: Rejuvenation and healing of potato varieties

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REJUVENATION OF POTATOES BY CHILDREN

Thanks to the second method, they heal their favorite variety with the help of children formed on large potatoes.

And it is easier to do this than in the first case, although here it will not work to become a breeder. spring

among the potatoes of the last crop, which remained unreduced (the so-called food), the largest tubers are selected without visible diseases and other damage. They are laid separately in a cool cellar for the whole season, periodically sprayed with water and ventilated the room. After some time, baby nodules will form right on the potatoes or short stolons. In fact, there will be a kind of growth, not only painful, but planned and desired.

Since mother potatoes are selected, they lay in almost sterile conditions, were not exposed to harmful weather effects, diseases and pests in the beds, babies are “born” without pathologies. And most importantly, these seed mini-tubers will be of the desired variety and bushes FROM them - with strong immunity. In late October - early November, they are carefully separated, dried in a warm place and stored as usual until planting next season.

REJUVENATION OF POTATOES WITH SHELLS AND ROOMS

The third technique relies on a pre-selected parent bush and receiving cuttings from it. As long as there are no infections in them yet, the crop of mini-tubers after rooting will be healthy and of high quality.

After the potatoes have faded, cuttings 15-20 cm long are cut from the best bush, from its powerful shoots.

They are divided into even smaller parts of 4-5 cm, leaving one sheet on each. These segments are kept for 4 hours in a plant growth stimulant solution prepared according to the instructions, and planted in loose, moist soil in the evening or on a cloudy day. The row should be in partial shade, the distance between the cuttings is 3-4 cm, between the rows is 20 cm. The leaves are lightly sprinkled with soil.

Plantings are generously watered and mulched with peat, compost or sawdust with a layer of 1–2 cm. Then they are regularly watered according to the weather. The cuttings take root, grow, and in the fall form nodules. They are dried and stored in cloth bags until the new season. The parent bush acts as a kind of guarantor of the revival of the best properties of the variety.

You can do it differently. From a young bush 30-35 cm high, cut off the tops of shoots 6-8 cm each, soak for 10 hours in a solution of a root growth stimulator, plant them in a garden bed, water them, and then shade them for several days. By the end of the season, up to 5 small planting tubers are obtained from each bush.

In addition, after removing the tops, axillary shoots will come out on the cut plants in 10-12 days. They can also be separated and planted in the ground in the same way.

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WHAT GROWS FROM POTATO BULLS?

Overall the year was good. The very first berry is strawberry. The harvest was very rich, despite night frosts down to -3-7°. There was enough for food and supplies. My wife Anna Grigorievna made jam and froze the berries for the winter - now there will be enough until the new harvest! Berry bushes - currants and raspberries - also produced an excellent harvest. Some grew to weigh up to 10 kg! Candied variety, fleshy, sweet.

I can’t help but write about potatoes, which no family can do without. I plant it in double rows. Row length 5 m, between rows 30 cm, in a row 35 cm, aisles 90 cm.

For the second year now, I have been digging a trench 50 cm wide in the fall, almost the depth of a spade bayonet. I put all the foliage, vegetable tops, and flower remains in it. I cut the tall parts into pieces, throw a little manure on this “pie” and sprinkle it with earth (8-10 cm layer). By spring, all this stuff will rot, and there’s no need to dig anymore.

In the spring, I pull two cords at a distance of 30 cm and pass along with a hand hiller - it turns out to be a hole. In the holes, I use a planter (see picture) to mark nests in a checkerboard pattern and place the tubers in them with the sprouts facing up. If the sprouts are long, I place the potatoes sideways.

I sprinkle a handful of humus on top and cover it with a rake with a layer of soil 8-10 cm on both sides.

When the tops are 5-10 cm high, I hill them up head-on, making a hole between the rows to collect rainwater. I hill once a season. Before hilling, I scatter ash around the rows (1 heaped tablespoon), and 1 teaspoon between the bushes. nitrofoski or borofoski and add a handful of chopped pine branches (from the Colorado potato beetle). It helps, the year before last I counted no more than a dozen beetles, but in the past I found only a few while digging potatoes. There were no larvae.

I plant potatoes obtained from bulb seeds. In 2022, I sowed the seeds in mid-April. They sprouted thickly, I didn’t even hope for such germination. I dipped it into cups with a teaspoon, the roots were intertwined. I left 3-4 sprouts in the cups and cut out the rest with scissors. At the end of May I planted it in the garden. The seedlings quickly took root and began to grow. Care - as with all plantings.

I dug it up in September, although the tops were still green. The harvest was the size of a pea to a chicken egg (a couple of pieces), I filled a liter jar. The tubers were different in shape and color.

In 2022, from 18 bushes (I planted 2-3 pieces per nest), I collected two buckets (10 liters each) of large potatoes, there were no small things.

Last year I planted these updated potatoes and was very pleased with the harvest. I will write about tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables in the next letter, and now about the garden.

TAR PITCHES

The grapes produced a good harvest, but ripened later: apparently, the spring frosts had an effect, despite the shelter. The photo shows the Beauty variety. I have three apple trees. The main one is summer, it is more than 30 years old. Six varieties were grafted onto it at different times. Autumn Striped and Candy are already bearing fruit, Orlik, Augusta, Scarlet Anise. The early pear trees have not bloomed yet, we are waiting for next year. There are enough apples from one tree for food, drying, jam and juice.

Last summer we had a hurricane, almost all the fruit was shaken off, and there was nowhere to stand under the tree. It’s good that the apple tree itself survived - it is very spreading.

I won’t describe the care, it’s ordinary. Around young apple and pear trees, in preparation for winter, I make four holes 15-20 cm deep with a crowbar from different sides and put cotton fabric soaked in birch tar in them - this is protection from mice and rats.

My property is adjacent to a fire pond, and in 2018, water rats ate the roots of a six-year-old apple tree. In the spring it was all in bloom, then it dried up. Unfortunately, it was not possible to save him.

© Author: Vasily Fedorovich Terpenev. Nizhny Novgorod

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Reference by topic: Potato rejuvenation from A to Z - my technology (proven)

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HOW TO REJUVENATE A VARIETY OF POTATOES - VIDEO

© Author: G. OVSEEVA, experienced gardener

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