29 December 2013

Green Mountain Potato Onion Seedling progress

Last autumn I planted my seed of Kelly Winterton's potato onions. Kelly developed a huge potato onion from a variety that he had been growing for a number of years. When it started flowering, he collected seed, grew it out, and got a lot of diversity, but some of these were enormous, a great discovery since most potato onions are quite small. It's worth reading his online info, which I've linked.

My Green Mountain F1 plants are showing lots of diversity.
Some plants are just growing big onions, and aren't showing any sign of dividing or flowering.

Others have one or two divisions


Some have divided multiple times
And one very strange one has divided 5 or 6 times, and each division is now in the process of dividing again, giving what looks like 28 or so individual stalks, with a crazy Medusa-like tangle of leaves and stalks.

I'm hoping I get some Green Mountain-like big spud onions, but this multiple-bunching characteristic could be useful. Will need to see how it develops over summer.

Another plus from this batch is that a few of them are setting flower buds, giving the possibility of even more diversity - if they set seed and I can get them to grow.


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