I've always thought that certain things always come from tubers or sets: onions, garlic, potatoes, rhubarb. If you search for potato seed on Google, it will bring up seed potatoes, and I have yet to discover any potato seed available. I have however seen weird tomato-looking things on my tatties that I've always pondered the function of, and I now understand what they are - seeds!
The reason for the lack of commercially available potato seed comes back to GCSE biology, and genets and ramets. Tubers (or runners e.g. in strawberries) are genets (i.e. genetically identical), and the flowers are ramets (from the Latin ramus: branch) (this doesn't make sense to me!), the idea being that survival is ensured by the genets, but might be improved by the ramets. Thus the good ramets will survive, and the rubbish ones will die off - survival of the fittest. So if you use tubers, the crop you grow will be genetically identical to the 'stock' variety, and you're guaranteed a crop, which is what you want when you've paid money for something! Cross-pollination introduces variability, and the downside to this is that if you sow seed from something like a potato or garlic (and especially rhubarb from what I've heard!), you might end up with really disgusting produce. Equally it might be amazing: the basis of plant breeding.
So this year, if any of my garlic or potatoes go to seed, I will not chop off the offending flowering protusion as advised in my gardening books (producing seed is hungry work for the plant, so the produce will suffer) but let them flower and set seed. Then next year I can start my potato/ garlic breeding regime!
No comments:
Post a Comment