RE: Surrogate mother potatoe

At 10:13 PM 1/21/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Donald you write:
>>I planted my first and only hand pollinated pod from a 
>>TB...I can't wait to see what comes of these in the 
>>spring, After all, their mother died before they were born and a baking 
>>potato was their surrogate mother for over a month. You ask "A 
>>potato?"...Dr. Zurbrigg gave me instructions on how to rescue the
premature pod.  >>If anyone is interested I would be glad to share or
explain the technique.
>
>Yes! Yes! Yes! I am very interested! Between my cats, & kids I am always 
>losing some of my crosses. Oh, and I must admit to causing some loss myself, 
>pure clumsyness! So please tell me how to save these premees! I am sure
there 
>must be others who would like to hear this also.
>Jefrie Jenkins -- Kent, WA  zone 5 - AIS region 13

Jefrie,

I'm not sure that this is a foolproof method since I've only tried it once
and I've yet to see if the seed which matured was actually viable, but here
goes.  Warning! This is a long story, so if you're not interested exercise
the delete key.  

THE POD was produced on a fall blooming stalk of BROTHER CARL (TB) as a
result of my careless fondling of the flower to figure out what all of the
parts were. :)  I became enormously attached to THE POD and watched over it
like a mother hen for about a month and a half.  Then came that fateful
night of first real frost and I tried to cover the entire stalk with a
cardboard box and oops!, I knocked the poor thing off.  

I happened to be corresponding with Dr. Llolyd Zurbrigg by e-mail at the
time and I mentioned that this particular seed pod had broken off.  He
suggested that I attempt to rescue the pod by using a raw baking potato to
nourish the pod until it finished maturing.  

I accomplished this by cutting a small hole in potato to match the diameter
of the remaining stalk on the seed pod.  I then made a fresh cut on the
bottom of the seed pod stalk and inserted the stalk of the seed pod into
the hole in the raw potato.  It was still a loose fit, so I used the melted
wax from a birthday candle to seal the edges where the pod rested on the
potato surface.  I placed this new union of potato and seed pod in a letter
tray on the top of my computer desk in front of a north facing window (no
particular reasoning here, except that I could keep a close eye on THE POD).

THE POD stayed green and firm for about another month, at which point it
seemed to start loosing it's healthy green color.  I checked and it was no
longer firmly grafted to the potato.  I removed it from the potato and
placed it in the letter tray, unsure of what to do next.  I then figured
that THE POD was as mature as it was going to get at 3+ months of age, so I
performed a C-section on THE POD to see what the seeds looked like.  I've
never seen what mature TB seeds look like, but these looked about like
small boiled peanuts and most were a light tan color.  Being from the
southern U.S. I've shelled my share of butter beans (limas) and these seeds
looked "filled out" to me.:)  

I planted the seeds the next day, directly in my raised bed that I use for
vegetable gardening. The soil is a mixture of our natural sand with several
season of compost and manure additions, but now mostly sand again.  I
eagerly await the spring to see if anything germinates from the experiment
with THE POD and the potato.  

I guess to be scientifically objective about the effectiveness of this
procedure, one would have to try this with many pods of the same cross at
the same time with potatoes from the same bag, etc., etc.  I'll try to
remember to report, good or bad, what comes of these seeds in the spring.
Donald Mosser
Member of AIS, HIPS, SIGNA, SSI, SLI, SPCNI, and IRIS-L
dmosser@southconn.com
http://www.geocities.com/rainforest/5570

North Augusta, South Carolina, USA
On the South Carolina and Georgia Border
USDA Zone 7b-8
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