Zone5

Washington State plant breeder Tom Wagner of Tater-Mater visited Brown Envelope Seeds last weekend near Skibbereen to give a two-day workshop on breeding new varieties of tomatoes and potatoes.

This was a fascinating experience, and a great opportunity to learn some of the man’s great art. Tom has been breeding thousands of varieties of these vegetables over more than half a century, including the famous Green Zebra Tomatoes and specializing in varieties of potato that withstand late blight, as well as selecting for other qualities such as late frost resistance and keeping abilities for tomatoes and even potatoes that could be grown for their spectacular flowers, along with increased nutrients, flavour, texture and colour.

Blight resistance is the holy grail for potato growers in wetter parts of the world, and Tom has shown that by constant selection of resistant varieties grown from True Potato Seed (TPS) it is possible to keep ahead of the fungus.

Above: Tom collects tomato pollen

Tom has a large germplasm of potato varieties and True Potato seed and showed us how to sve the seed from the potato berries and discussed the genetics of potato breeding.

The course was attended by a posse from the Irish Seed savers Association as well as several more local gardenenrs and seed savers, so it was a great chance to catch up with old friends.

Tom showed numerous slides of his plots around Washington State and talked us through some of the plant breeding operations and seed saving, as well as practical demonstrations on hand pollination.

Quite unexpectedly, he had also a special event planned for this, his first visit to Ireland: Tom has a connection to this part of the world through his grandfather who came from the Isle of Mann and has retained this connection through his breeding work with the Lumper, the old variety which was grown extensively in Ireland through the famines of the 1840s and the one which succumbed to blight, wiping out much of the food of the Irish peasantry and resulting in the great famine.

It has been a dream of Tom’s to bring back improved, blight resistant varieties of the Lumper to Ireland, so on the Saturday we drove out to the  Abbeystrewery famine graveyard near Skibbereen where Tom said a few words about  the famine and then ceremoniously scattered some of the new seed on the graves of the 9000 famine victims buried there. It seemed a poignat and historic moment as we stood in the quiet and beautiful graveyard while Matteo of the ISSA played a lament on thie fiddle.

More on Tom and his amazing work here.

Many thanks to Madeline and Mike for hosting the event that is sure to usher in a new era in Ireland as the seed savers here become seed breeders and maybe we will even see a return of the Lumper.