I’ve always been fascinated by the potato plant. Every year on vacation while driving to the upper peninsula in Michigan with my family we took a route that happened to be surrounded by potatoes in full flower on both sides of the road. “Look kids, potatoes” Silence. No one said anything. I have shared my experiences with complete strangers about my love of potatoes. It is not a great opener. I remember at one point just prior to speaking about some of my plants at a farm show, several people got up and walked out just prior to when I began. One was a research scientist. This highlights several problems both in understanding crop biodiversity and ways to capture that essence outside of the modern breeding paradigm free from restrictions and protocols. I find it exciting and dynamic. It’s hard to convey and even harder to explain. The potato is not thought of as a glamorous vegetable. To have ‘nature’ do the breeding is my goal. Today there is no shortage of potato varieties and potato breeding. That is why there is silence and apathy in many ways. May I also add it is quite possible I have yet to find a way to convey this importance in a more exhuberant way. I mean you can’t blame the potato for this.

It is a joy to grow potato seedlings from true seeds extracted from the poisonous fruit. I just don’t understand why the marketplace is so impossible to go into and release new varieties. I am out of the loop. It turns out that the universe of the potato is sharply defined and rarely changes. Only people ‘in the know’ accept a new potato variety. You can spew out new spuds like no tomorrow; you just can’t expect people to acknowledge your contribution. They are very busy, bending to the commercial demands of an industry well entrenched with expert breeders. It is a one per 100,000 shot at stardom from numbered seedlings to named variety. Huge resources are needed to make this a reality and even then the highway of potato development is littered with the cultivars of yesteryear. However, this is also a perfect place to be in terms of discoveries because everyone else is focused on only what will please the potato industry. The plant breeders themselves are also highly defined and regimented, limiting choices even further. It is from this platform you can redefine the value of this most widespread food plant. That is the contribution you can make. You might feel like a small potato in a big universe. It is not left to chance. It is left to your creative energies and a way to find the expressions adapted to your environment. This is your universe redefined and made to be shared to others creating health in its wake.

My solution was simple. I read nothing. I know nothing. I am nothing. I want pure subjective experience not objective knowledge of the potato, Solanum tuberosus. When I start, I am not really looking for a specific outcome. I want to look at all the wonderful treasures of diversity when I get there. So whether it is teeny or a pound each, dark purple or white, it does not matter much. I am not going to pick the brightest or biggest jewel and run off with my find. I am trying to create a population not a variety. If one comes along, that is fine but it is less important to me. Last year, I relinquished and released one I named Tranquility. Tranquility had the trait of incredibly dense root hairs as well as high yields and short season prior to virus infection. It takes a population that expands and flourish over time free of disease, insects and virus in a less than perfect potato world where spray is not used to buffer the countless things that also love the potato plant. Only a population can do that. In this way, generations get stronger over time by creating progeny that expand the potato’s adaptation to your environment. For me the population is the individual. It is potato consciousness reflecting the full range of the potato.

Just prior to the pandemic, I was trying to find a greenhouse in my area that would grow upwards to 50,000 seedling plants in blow molded trays just like marigolds. The idea was I could make available in bulk the seedling potatoes I developed as Perennial Perpetual Diversity Potato. You grow and sell it from true seed in a similar way slips of sweet potatoes are sold. To do this I contacted several greenhouse operators. I did find one smaller producer that would grow them given enough lead time. Because of the premium greenhouse space for other crops like pansy’s and petunias it was difficult to get my foot in the door. The potato seed would be best pelletized because it is so small. Most greenhouse companies in my area near Kalamazoo, Michigan are massive bedding plant operations and locked into one or two seed companies. They view my seed as potentially hazardous in that it has never been tested or used to any degree. It would be better to have another seed company set it up as pelletized and screened for virus. This was not an easy row to hoe.

Park Seed company offered Clancy and won an All American Vegetable in 2019. They also offered Zolushka, a true seed potato, that produced massive tubers in my plantings in one year. A company called Cultivariable has some of the most diverse seed and tuber offerings I have ever seen. I think he grew out the whole USDA potato seed repository! I grew the indigenous North American species called Four Corners potato. It was not adapted in Michigan. This was a common occurrence to me. The numerous related species potatoes did not survive long. I thought it was a good idea but eventually went back to my old standby diploids from the heritage blue potatoes. From what people have told me is that all modern potatoes are male sterile and no longer reproduce this way. Hence the bottleneck of crop biodiversity.

When potatoes fly is the only way to see the root strength and structure found within the soil. ‘Purple Ease’ has this structure which has held up over a decade of growing outdoors in many locations throughout my farm.

The potato still has a story to tell and will continue long after I am gone. It is a lot more exciting than it lets on. The universe it lives in is huge and filled with wonderful diversity. I may have appointed myself as its reluctant spokesperson and proponent for now. Soon others will follow. They too will find themselves as a small potato in a big universe. I guess you could say humility breeds potatoes.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus