GRAMMINEAE |
SOLANECEAE Another large family with the species we hold detailed below:
Potato (Solanum tuberosum) All of the potatoes we have are very old varieties that often have come to me with many different names from different places, all over the North and South Island, Stewart Island and the Chathams. Urenika is the most widespread; Pawhero, Karoro and Whataroa are also very widespread. All are good croppers given the right conditions.
Cultivation tips Some people find potatoes easy to grow, while others find them very difficult. In Northland they are very blight prone and with heavy soils we have a hard job on our hands, a bit like growing tomatoes. I have found the following things very helpful: I plant potatoes into trenches of wilted comfrey leaves, and if possible seaweed straight from the beach or seaweed meal - this means you can't plant your main crop potatoes until early November, which is the best time to plant them in terms of missing early and late blight. Mulch heavily or hill up (this stops the potato worm getting into the potatoes and infecting your eating and seed potatoes, and your ground!). A weekly foliar spray of fish with liquid nettle, cleavers, horsetail or any herb that concentrates silica, which grows strong cell tissue that helps prevent fungal attack. Keep on hand some Cutonic Copper or Summer Disease control,, in case you have a wet, humid season and it feels as though they'll get blight anyway. Some people prefer to put on a precautionary copper spray to prevent blight, and this does seem to work well. If you want to plant early or late season potatoes, the Phyter, copper or sulphur will probably be essential in the north anyway. Use compost, well-rotted manure, seaweed, etc. for early crop potatoes, as you won't have comfrey available. Saving your own seed each year from the carefully selected healthiest plants will be your best way of ensuring large healthy crops each year. Potatoes get viruses and if your potatoes have a virus it maybe often seen in the leaves. If you potatoes with crinkly or scrunched up or blotchy yellow leaves take them out. Remove the whole plant , and certainly don’t save your seed potatoes from them.
Harvesting and storage When harvesting potatoes, choose a dry, windy day. The potatoes need to dry in 1 day so they are not sitting in the sun going green and poisonous. As you pick them up, divide into 3 containers:
Those you are storing for eating need to go into a paper-type sack, like a rubbish bag, that keeps out the light, but which breathes (a thick hessian bag will also do). Store them in a cool, dry place.
Seed Saving Information Those you are storing as seed potatoes need to be hung up in an airy place, out of the sun but in the light, in an onion bag (or string type bag that lets the light in and stops them from sprouting). This will discourage the shooting of the sprouts until you wish to plant them, when you take them down and put them in a tray in a dark place for a week or two. I suggest you keep your very best potatoes for seed - not ones smaller than the size of an egg. You can cut large potatoes up before planting, so long as you leave a shoot or eye on each piece and dip the cut side in wood ash or leave to dry in the sun. If you have trouble with moths laying their eggs in the eyes of the potatoes when they are in storage (you can tell this is happening by the tiny little round things coming out of the eyes that look like eggs but is actually "caterpillar poo," connected together with a spider web like thread), you can make up a bucket of garlic and pyrethrum spray, or maybe neem oil spray, or may be wormwood liquid tea, and dip your onion bag of potatoes into it to kill the little caterpillars or the eggs.
Tomatoes Tomatoes are usually self pollinating and are not usually visited by bees. The flowers on the bottom trusses (or first trusses that appear) are sometimes physically different to the flowers on the following trusses and if you watch carefully you can see that sometimes the flowers are double, and have their stamens protruding in a way that they could be cross pollinated by the bees. I have seen very little crossing (though others tell me they have) however it is possible, and has been known to happen. I avoid saving seeds from fruit on the first truss of fruit. Always grow several plants of each type you are saving seeds from to check that the plant you save your seeds from is true to type.
When saving tomato seeds always chose fully ripened fruit. With tomatoes I cut the top off the fruit and squeeze out the seeds with the juice that surrounds them. Leave this juice to go mouldy on top 3-5 days, then add water and stir vigorously. The good seeds will sink and the poor seeds and the rubbish will float. Pour the rubbish off the top and add
Peppers and Eggplants Peppers and eggplants cross far more readily, and I would suggest you never plant hot peppers anywhere near sweet peppers if you are serious about saving seed. Sweet peppers could be saved in the same garden if you plant them in blocks (around 20 plants) 10 metres from another variety with a high crop in between such as corn. Hot peppers need to be in another area, probably 30 -50 metres away from any other peppers. Similarly eggplants need to be in blocks for good pollination rather than long rows but keep varieties 20-30 metres apart.
Pepper seeds are easy to save, just scoop them out of the peppers ( be careful if they are hot peppers as the heat is concentrated at the top of the seed stalks...wear gloves if necessary), place the seeds in a container in the sun, greenhouse, drier etc, and when crunchy, separate seeds and extraneous material and store. Eggplants need to be left to get very ripe (they change colour) and hard before picking. I chop them up and wiss in a blunt old blender with water. If you then tip this mixture into a bucket and add water the good seeds will sink and the weak seeds and rubbish will float and it can then be tipped off and the seeds dried.
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