22 February 2014

Green Mountain Potato Onion F1 results

I've reported previously on my progress growing Kelly Winterton's Green Mountain Potato Onion. The plants are now senescing, so I've pulled most of them, and the variety is tremendous. There is considerable variety in colour, with both browns and whites, but the real variation is in size.

These nine different bunches are all siblings of Green Mountain F1.
The two big white single bulbs are spectacular, check out the weight (grams)...

 

I've got about a dozen seedheads with green seed capsules still maturing on 4 of the plants, and I've harvested one seedhead which has yielded a few dozen seeds, so chances for a bit more variety in another generation.

All of these bulbs will be planted back into beds this autumn. I'm hoping the single bulbs will divide in their second season of growing.
There seems to be a fewf broad phenotypes in this F1 generation - these large single bulbs, of which I have another couple of smaller ones developing, some pale clusters, (upper left) and some brown skinned clusters. Unharvested at the moment are a couple of many divided clusters, with a couple of dozen divisions in one of the clusters. Yet to see if these form bulbs, and it is these that are flowering most profusely, so hoping that there is still a fair bit of genetic diversity within, and that some of them at least give good large bulbs.
Have to wait and see.

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