Prepping With Potato Seeds (NOT Seed Potatoes!)

Hi All,
As part of my preparedness routine, I add purchased seeds as well as foraged seeds to my SHTF storage stock from time to time.

As a complete noob with reference to potatoes though, whenever I internet search for potato seeds, all the results seem to be about seed potatoes. That's all well and good if I'm wanting to re-plant sprouting potatoes for the following year but what about long-term storage?

Potato seeds and seed potatoes are two very different things indeed.

Seed potatoes (potatoes that are for the purpose of re-planting) have a relatively short shelf life where as potato seeds (pods of seeds from pollinated flowers) should last for many years if correctly stored.

Any hoo, it seems (please correct me if I've researched this wrong) that growers tend to prefer seed potatoes as the genetics are maintained from one year to the next so the potatoes maintain their taste, size, etc., etc. Where as potato seed genetics can vary within the same plant with many seed pods. In terms of long term storage/survival though, I suspect any bulk carbohydrate is a boon to your supplies regardless of the possible slight changes incurred. I've also (quite disturbingly) read that many cultivated varieties can be infertile and will not produce flowers/seed pods.

With this in mind, I was extremely surprised to find large potatoes vines growing out of my mother's composter a couple of months ago at the end of her garden.

My mother has dementia and so her garden gets very little attention now. It appears that she must have thrown some old potatoes away many moons ago and with the lid not being on properly, rainwater has gained access and resulted in several vines climbing out the top. They've produced a few flowers and subsequently a load of the 'green-tomato' like seed pods.

Today I've checked the pods growth while visiting my mother and noticed that the pods and now ready for collecting (the pods literally fall into your hand as you touch them). Based on internet info, I will now store the pods in a warm, dry and dark place for a month in order for the pods to turn black and then I will harvest the many thousands of seeds.

I imagine that this haul will be a huge boost to my seed collection :)

I'll appreciate any extra information and/or corrections required to my post regarding potato seeds.

TTFN,

EggMeister.

btw, I'll be digging the potatoes out of the composter very soon too :)