Free Seeds offer

[rdback]

Saw this on another site I frequent. Didn't know if there is interest for this sort of thing here, but thought I'd share just in case.

Going to Seed website

[macmex]

Very interesting! Their potato seed looks like a wonderful thing! If one wants to play around with mixes (grexes) or just don't care about growing a specific variety, this would be great! Hats off to these folk!

[FrostyTurnip]

How would one land race potatoes?  Hand pollinate? 

[macmex]

I believe the "landrace" thing folk most often talk about is really not a landrace, but rather just a bunch of crosses, often random in nature. The gardener just adds whatever they would like to the mix and "lets them go," saving seed each year. Now, of course, when saving seed for the next year everyone selects, whether they know it or not. So, over time that mix is supposed to produce a desirable population with a fairly wide range of genetics. It should work. But a landrace, well I'm not sure I'd call it that. I prefer the term "grex." To be a landrace, in my opinion, the mix would have to be grown by a good many people in a specific region. Genetic variation would be wider, not only in specific plantings, but even more noticeable from one locale to another. For instance, the tropical version of  calabaza de Castilla (c. moschata) in Mexico and Central America is grown by hundreds or maybe thousands of villages, over a huge area. In any given area. I would sometimes drive for a couple of days, going between coastal and high desert regions, all of which had calabaza de Castilla growing and sold in their open air markets. It was recognizable as calabaza de Castilla by everyone due to the characteristics every one of those squash possessed. They were all oblong or pumpkin shaped (no crooknecks). They were all tan at maturity, though some were a darker green while immature and turned tan more slowly than others. They all had rampant growth. They were essentially the Central American equivalent of the Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin.

Here's a photo of our youngest, holding one of these Calabaza de Castilla back around 1994.



Here's a photo of one of the plants, which I grew in Tahlequah, in 2006. Notice the leaves. All Calabaza de Castilla  have this kind of foliage.  



I never got any fruit from it in Tahlequah, as this landrace is day length sensitive. It requires short days to begin flowering. By the time it flowered, it was too close to frost to make mature seed.

Anyway, my theory is that the original landrace was kind of a spectrum, extending all the way from South America to the northern reaches of parts of North America. Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin, along with the Choctaw pumpkin and a good many other oblong, rampantly growing c. moschatas, were all part of that giant landrace, which has since been fragmented. Yet, if I could transport a wagon load of Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkins to the Monday, market day produce area of Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, Mexico.


Customers would perhaps notice that it looked slightly different than they usual local strain, but recognize it as a Calabaza de Castilla nonetheless. (Note: I've seen them in Mexico which much more closely resemble the Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin than the Calabaza de Castilla I grew in 1993.

Okay, that's just a round about way of giving back ground on the answer. In short, I don't believe that just any mix is really a landrace. Given time and population it might develop into one.

With potatoes, they most often outcross. That's just how it is. I haven't heard of anyone hand pollinating them, though perhaps someone does. From what I've seen, Will Whitson, of Cultivariable Seeds and Tom Wagner (Tater Mater Seeds) both cross their potatoes by simply planting varieties adjacent to other varieties. Even if you don't have another variety nearby, you'll almost never get a seedling which is 100% like its parent, as potatoes are tetraploid or sometimes diploid. Even a self pollinated seed pod will usually produce at least 8 different variants in seedlings.

But the mix offered here is doubtless a very good mix. Those are very nice, famous even, genetics they list in their makeup. As with any true potato seed one would grow them out, expecting some duds, some "average Joes," and maybe an extraordinary "star" to come out of it. One would save roots from the "stars"  and seeds from anything acceptable. These are good seeds.