Potato seeds

I am not referring to seed potatoes. Has anyone here used potato seeds?  What were the results?

I tried some years ago, over ten.

I planted potato seed in pots, then planted out the plants when they were big enough not to get lost.

I planted seed potatoes in the next row.

I had pretty much exactly the same yield from each plant, seed potato or potato seed.

I haven't grown potatoes for years now though so can't give long-term results.

I grow potatoes from TPS about every other year. For me, they produce *way* fewer and smaller tubers the first year, so I can't count on it for my main potato crop. But I grew a bunch last year and then we had a tasting -- eliminating the bitter or nauseating ones. I have them in the cellar ready to plant once it warms up. And then I'll evaluate their yield and quality again. If they're some sweet combination of: tasty, productive, weirdly flavored but not bad, dark-colored, and anything else that catches our attention, they'll go into rotation. If not, we'll just eat them all and that variety will never exist again.

What else are you looking to hear about them?

Hi Christopher,

Pretty much what you said.  Just looking to gain from the experiences of others.  I have several pack of potato seeds I haven’t used.

One thing I like is that once you're growing potatoes from seed, you're growing potatoes that will probably produce seed, so you always have the option of developing new varieties. A lot of the old classics don't produce much in the way of berries.

Potato plants from teensy seed potatoes are somewhat frost tolerant. How about the seedlings from TPS?

Never tried TPS myself but I've been curious about it. The frost tolerance question is interesting, I'd guess seedlings are more tender than plants from tubers just because they're so small and fragile early on. The breeding side of it is what appeals to me though, the idea of developing something adapted to your own conditions over a few generations.

I grew lots of potatoes from true seeds.

I selected first for varieties capable of making seeds.
Then for productivity of first year tubers.
I consistently selected against bad flavors.

Then if I found any I really liked, I grew them as clones.

Years ago, before I learned about TPS, I grew out a small bag of red, white, and blue French fingerling potatoes. They produced well enough in a filtered light garden, were the perfect size to toss in a pot of green beans, and had the added benefit of producing some seed berries as well. I've grown more common commercial types twice before, and they haven't given seed berries, despite a long growing season without digging them up until late fall. Just sharing what worked and what didn't for anyone that may want to try saving TPS and aren't sure which of the more available varieties are likely to make berries vs. not.