Survivors
Michel (aka Canadamike), someone I know from the HG Discussion forum and who lives in Ontario, recently posted this picture of his potatoes (reproduced here with his permission).
Late blight just struck his garden, suddenly killing most of his potatoes and tomatoes. This is of course the bad news, and until you’ve experienced it yourself in your own garden, you’ll never understand what a devistating feeling it is to have this happen.
But look at this row of potatoes!
Blighted potatoes to the left and right, but these are just blooming away as if nothing was happening! What a sight to see! These are a line of blight resistant potatoes bred by Tom Wagner.
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6 Responses to “Survivors”
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[...] Blight resistant potatoes. No, really. They are. [...]
That is very impressive – are they on public sale? We’ve done okay for potatoes this year, but we were badly hit last year.
Hi ab,
Nope, these aren’t for sale anywhere. The only way you can get them is for free. Are you coming to the meeting in Oxford? I’m sure Tom will have some of his varieties there. I’m not sure yet if we can really arrange true potatoes, because these require import/export permits, especially for the UK, but Tom will at least have some potato seed with him (TPS) to share.
Wow! How do I get late blight resistant potatoes!!! That’s awesome!
Pam: Thanks for the comment! I just tried to leave a comment on your blog, but I am not a Google/Blogger member and you have your blog configured to not allow comments under those circumstances. Since you also don’t have an email address on your blog, I don’t have any way to contact you.
You may want to consider allowing ‘anonymous’ comments on your blog.
Everyone:
If you live in the US, Tom offers some of his varieties via his website or seed company:
http://tater-mater.blogspot.com/
This is definitely one of the most exciting pictures I have seen on HG yet and evidence of great work done.